Rosli Mohamad

The moderating role of trust in business to business electronic commerce (B2B EC) adoption

Abstract This paper revisited the role of trust in Business to Business Electronic Commerce (B2B EC) settings in Jordan, using an alternative view on trust suggesting that this variable has a moderating effect rather than having a direct impact on the intentions of firms to adopt B2B EC. An interactionist model among trust and technological, organizational, and environmental factors was developed. A survey of 239 supply chain managers in Jordan was used to test the proposed model. Analyzed data shows that the moderating impact of trust was significant in one path, which was perceived desirability (stemming from the diffusion of innovation theory and representing the technological view). Trust did not moderate the impacts of organizational and environmental variables. The findings provided insights into how existing relationships between trading partners may not be flexible enough to absorb new technology. In a context in which trust beliefs are well established and critical such as Jordan, the flexibility of firms in responding to adoption motivations may be hampered rather than enabled.

Practical Training and the Audit Expectations Gap: The Case of Accounting Undergraduates of Universiti Utara Malaysia

The accounting profession has long faced the issue of an audit expectations gap; being the gap between the quality of the profession’s performance, its objectives and results, and that which the society expects. The profession believes that the gap could be reduced over time through education. Studies have been carried out overseas and in Malaysia to determine the effect of education in narrowing the audit expectations gap. Extending the knowledge acquired, this paper investigates whether academic internship programs could reduce the audit expectations gap in Malaysia. Using a pre-post method, the research instrument adapted from Ferguson et al. (2000) is administered to the Universiti Utara Malaysia’s accounting students at the beginning and end of their internship program. The results show there is a significant change in perceptions among students after the internship program. However, changes in perceptions do not warrant an internship program as a means of reducing the audit expectations gap as misperceptions are still found among respondents on issues of auditing after the completion of the internship program. Nevertheless, an internship program can still be used to complement audit education in a university as it is an ideal way to expose students to professional issues and enables them to have a better insight of the actual performance and duties of auditors.

What drives global B2B e-commerce usage: an analysis of the effect of the complexity of trading system and competition pressure

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the conditions in which B2B e-commerce is most likely to diffuse widely at the country level. This paper examines the role of trading system complexity and pressure of competition on B2B EC diffusion by controlling Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure. Our sample comprises a pool of country-year dataset from 143 countries over a three-year period (2014–2016). The data were collected from Network Readiness Index Report and Global Competitiveness Report. The findings provide evidence that greater the complexity of trading relationships with the global economy and high level of pressure from the competition are the main forces for B2B use across countries. Consequently, the authors suggest that having a strong trade relationship with developed countries with matured B2B e-commerce practice is helpful in sustaining B2B e-commerce use across countries.

Current state of web accessibility of Malaysian ministries websites

Despite the fact that Malaysian public institutions have progressed considerably on website and portal usage, web accessibility has been reported as one of the issues deserves special attention. Consistent with the government moves to promote an effective use of web and portal, it is essential for the government institutions to ensure compliance with established standards and guidelines on web accessibility. This paper evaluates accessibility of 25 Malaysian ministries websites using automated tools i.e. WAVE and Achecker. Both tools are designed to objectively evaluate web accessibility in conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) and United States Rehabilitation Act 1973 (Section 508). The findings reported somewhat low compliance to web accessibility standard amongst the ministries. Further enhancement is needed in the aspect of input elements such as label and checkbox to be associated with text as well as image-related elements. This findings could be used as a mechanism fo...

The contingent role of dependency in predicting the intention to adopt B2B e-commerce

ABSTRACT A review of existing Electronic Commerce adoption literature reveals that the prevailing theoretical frameworks implicitly assume that organizations are independent and have complete control over their decisions to adopt innovations. Given the fact that organizations are often constrained by and depend on their environment and exchange partners to survive, this paper proposes that Resource Dependency can either be a facilitator or inhibitor of the role of Technological, Organizational, and Environmental (TOE) motivating factors. Using 239 valid responses from supply chain managers in Jordan, the study found partial support for the role of Resource Dependency as a moderator. The findings provide insights on how Resource Dependency between partners drives different patterns of innovation acceptance among potential adopters, regardless of several technological and organizational motivations to innovate. The results suggest that predicting how innovation is diffused within a market needs a detailed understanding of the inter-dependence structure among the supply chain members.

A proposed framework of big data readiness in public sectors

Growing interest over big data mainly linked to its great potential to unveil unforeseen pattern or profiles that support organisation’s key business decisions. Following private sector moves to embrace big data, the government sector has now getting into the bandwagon. Big data has been considered as one of the potential tools to enhance service delivery of the public sector within its financial resources constraints. Malaysian government, particularly, has considered big data as one of the main national agenda. Regardless of government commitment to promote big data amongst government agencies, degrees of readiness of the government agencies as well as their employees are crucial in ensuring successful deployment of big data. This paper, therefore, proposes a conceptual framework to investigate perceived readiness of big data potentials amongst Malaysian government agencies. Perceived readiness of 28 ministries and their respective employees will be assessed using both qualitative (interview) and quanti...

The determinants of Strategic Information System Planning (SISP) success: A proposed framework for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The growing importance of Information System (IS) to support business operation demands for adequate IS planning. Good IS planning enables organizations to closely align the IS and strategic business objectives. Such alignment ultimately ensures organizations to gain competitive advantages from IS-related investment. Despite extensive works to understand SISP practices in large organizations, works are still limited in the context of Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs). This issue is worth further investigation in view of the increasing importance of IS to support many facets of the SMEs operation. More importantly, due to inherent resource constraints among SMEs to invest in IS, top management commitment as well as user participation in IS planning activities are getting more crucial. This study, therefore proposes a framework to assess the effect of top management commitment and user participation on SISP success. The findings are of relevance for firm’s top management in ensuring SISP success.

Profiling E-business Practices amongst Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Using a Fit Perspective

E-business as a multifaceted application has vast capabilities to support todays business. Nevertheless, these capabilities do not equally benefit all firms. Therefore, appropriate selection of e-business solutions would substantially enhance firm efficiency and effectiveness. Despite extensive research in this domain, there are limited works that explore the extent to which SMEs successfully align diverse e-business capabilities to their strategic business functions. This is crucial considering that SMEs have relatively limited resources and thus make them more selective in ebusiness-related investments. This study therefore explores the current state of e-business fit (alignment) among Malaysian SMEs. The next attempt is to reveal any possible patterns that represent firms with respect to their e-business alignment characteristics. A self-administered survey was conducted on 140 SMEs owner/manager in order to investigate present status of ebusiness alignment across various business processes. The results generally indicate that firms perceive a relatively higher level of alignment in terms of information searching, sales, and internalrelated functions relative to other functions. A cluster analysis further classi5ies 5irms into three (3) groups with somewhat distinct alignment patterns. Despite several limitations, this study has provided insights on how e-business penetrates across firm operation and the extent to which it corresponds to the most salient functions of the business. This study, therefore, supports the claim that SMEs have different priorities over e-business solutions in support of various business functions. These findings have also provided more insights such as why some firms do not progress into a higher e-business ladder.