Robert Hecker

Technology‐enabled service delivery: An investigation of reasons affecting customer adoption and rejection

The use of technology to enable or facilitate the delivery of services has the potential to benefit customers and service providers alike. Correspondingly, however, the purposes to which technology is put, and the manner in which it is used, also has the potential to disenfranchise customers. Therefore the operational desirability and gains of any employment of technology to facilitate service provision should be balanced against the perceptions and behavioural response of customers. Our research aims to shed light on the reasons why customers adopt or reject technologically facilitated means of service delivery, and to develop a means by which likely adoption or rejection may be predicted. The research we have undertaken to date suggests that adoption or rejection of technologically facilitated services is moderated by the personal capacity and willingness of individuals.

Small firm Internet adoption: opportunities forgone, a journey not begun

This paper explores the endeavours of five small firms to develop Web‐based commerce capabilities within their existing operations. The focus is on the strategic acquisition and exploitation of knowledge which underpins new value creating activities related to Web‐based commerce. A normative Web‐based commerce adoption model developed from a review of the extant literature related to electronic marketing, entrepreneurship, and the diffusion of new innovations was empirically tested. A multiple case study design enabled the exploration of contemporary marketing and entrepreneurship issues within the real life context of five small firms. The model aimed to emphasis best‐practice adoption methods emphasizing the value of a firm’s market orientation and entrepreneurial capabilities. A preliminary test of the model’s theoretical contentions lent support to its overall focus, but found that the firm’s existing learning capabilities were diminished during the adoption of Web‐based commerce, and that a lack of vision and prior knowledge produced sub‐optimal adoption outcomes.

Dissociation of visual and spatial processing in working memory

Although models of working memory originally included visuo-spatial memory as an undifferentiated component, recent work indicates that spatial location is separable from other visual characteristics. The evidence which is derived from interference, however, typically requires the division of conscious attention between primary and interference tasks. In the present experiments the differential effects of an unattended flickering surround upon serial recall of a central stimulus presentation were investigated. Colour changes in the surround created more interference than achromatic flicker when the task was to report either the colours or the patterns presented in the target. When the locations of the targets were required, however, the situation was reversed and the achromatic flicker created more interference than did the colour flicker. It is suggested that this double dissociation of identification and location is best understood in terms of differential involvement of the magnocellular and parvocellular pathways.

Human resource strategies and organisational structures for managing gold‐collar workers

States that the rapid expansion of the information technology (IT) industry has brought about skill shortages in many advanced western economies. Examines human resource (HR) policies and organisational structures for developing and retaining IT staff through two case studies of organisations in the IT and telecommunications sector in Australia. Concludes that developing HR policies in order to recruit and retain staff, and linking these to appropriate organisational structure, is becoming of increased importance in order to encourage employees to remain with a company.

Electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace: The effects on trust in management, and the moderating role of occupational type

Purpose – Electronic monitoring and surveillance (EMS) practices provide new challenges in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between EMS in the workplace on employees’ trust in management. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based upon data from the 2012 Australian Electronic Workplace Survey of 500 randomly sampled employees. Controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, the data were analysed using OLS and ordered probit regression. Findings – The regression analyses identified that EMS has, on average, a negative relationship with trust in management. The authors further differentiated the sample to examine the potential impact of EMS on trust between manual and non-manual employees. The study found the relationship between EMS and trust in management was only evident for manual workers. Research limitations/implications – Future research should investigate the extent to which employee attitudes, commitment and engagement are impac...

e-Extinction: An Illusion of Knowledge, the Presence of Ignorance, or Evolutionary Fate?

At present, the rate of small firm adoption of the Internets ubiquitous World Wide Web (the web) far exceeds the actual exploitation its commercial potential. An inability to strategically acquire, comprehend and use external knowledge is proposed as a major barrier to optimal exploitation of the Internet. This paper discusses the limitations of applying market orientation theory to explain and guide small firm exploitation of the web. Absorptive capacity is introduced as an alternative theory that when viewed from an evolutionary perspective provides potentially more insightful discussion. An inability to detect emerging business model dominant designs is suggested to be a mixture of the nature of the technology that supports the Internet and underdeveloped small firm knowledge processing capabilities. We conclude with consideration of the practical and theoretical implications that arise from the paper.

Use of social media at work: a new form of employee voice?

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have become some of the most powerful communication tools both inside and outside of the workplace. While much of the focus has been on the potential negative and destructive (‘dark’) consequences of social media at work, less attention has been given to the harnessing of social media in a constructive (‘smart’) way to enhance human resource management (HRM). In the context of this special issue on technology and HRM, this paper takes an exploratory approach to examine the relationships between social media use and job satisfaction using data from the Australian Electronic Workplace Survey. We find that the level of job satisfaction is a factor in the desire to use social media to voice concerns related to work, but this effect is only found for Generation Y employees. However, we find social media is not commonly used to voice concerns related to work and this suggests that it is an untapped resource which could provide management with an immediate or ‘real’-time understanding of workplace issues.

Sources of Individual Differences in IT

Abstract Interest in inspection time (IT), uniformly thought to index ‘speed-of-processing’, has been maintained because of its established empirical correlation with general mental ability and performance IQ measures. The IT procedure generally consists of a simple visual discrimination task displayed at various critical exposure durations and immediately followed by a suitable mask. Processing is assumed to terminate at mask onset, which seems inappropriate in light of the target/mask composite necessarily available with integration theories of backward masking. The present paper reports five experiments involving attended and unattended secondary stimuli and additional factor analyses of previous studies involving IT. From these it is proposed that IT is better thought of as indexing the power an individual can bring to bear within a specific cognitive domain rather than ‘speed-of-processing’ per se . The consequence is that the observed IT-IQ correlation is merely the inevitable outcome of measuring the same domain with two different tasks; rather than due to some elemental factor such as mental speed underlying both tasks. Ways in which this model could be tested are discussed.

Helping to learn: governance of knowledge-sharing in the Aurora preferred suppliers alliance network

The learning benefits offered by strategic alliances make the effective governance of knowledge-sharing between collaborative partners a key element of managing partnership networks. This research explored the question of how a firms governance of its alliance network facilitates knowledge-sharing about effective collaboration between the hub or broker firm and network members. The study examined the operation of Aurora Energys preferred suppliers alliance network between 1992 and 2005. The Aurora preferred suppliers network operates in Tasmania, an island state located off the south coast of Australia and is a hub-and-spoke network of dyadic alliances between Aurora Energy, an energy company, and 14 retailers of electrical heating appliances. The study found that Auroras governance of network conditions facilitated knowledge-sharing which generated three distinct forms of value: beneficial alliance outcomes; new knowledge about utilising alliance relationships; and new functional skills.