Tung-Ching Lin

Understanding knowledge management system usage antecedents: An integration of social cognitive theory and task technology fit

The factors influencing KMS usage are of major concern to the MIS community. Among the diverse theories employed to help understand this is task technology fit (TTF), which considers the needed technological characteristics of the task as a major factor determining usage. This theory, however, ignores the personal cognition dimension, which has been found to affect the use of an IS. By integrating TTF and social cognitive theory (SCT), we attempted to determine the key factors affecting KMS usage in IT, the organizational task, and personal cognition. Through a survey of 192 KMS users, task interdependence, perceived task technology fit, KMS self-efficacy, and personal outcome expectations were found to have substantial influences on KMS usage. Among the key factors, KMS self-efficacy was found to be especially important as it was substantially and positively correlated to perceived task technology fit, personal and performance-related outcome expectations, and KMS usage.

Withholding effort in knowledge contribution: The role of social exchange and social cognitive on project teams

Few investigations have been made to determine what factors influence people in withholding knowledge from their colleagues. We created a construct, knowledge withholding (KW), defined as the likelihood that individuals contribute less knowledge to others in the organization than they could. We have formulated a model, based on social exchange theory and social cognition theory, to analyze the antecedents of KW from both personal and contextual perspectives. The contextual influencers were subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding to help in understanding KW. Results of a survey of 162 MIS alumni of a university, who had experienced software development, trust, distributive justice, and team-related work showed that personal outcome expectations had a substantial influence on KW.

Exploring the relationship between receiving and offering online social support

Drawing on the taxonomy of social support and the transactional model of stress and coping, we proposed a dual social support model to study online social support exchange behaviors. Our model predicts that receiving problem-focused and emotion-focused support from others enhances coping resources; in turn, these coping resources are the primary drivers of the willingness to offer support to others. We empirically tested the proposed dual social support model using data collected from 212 users of online support communities. The results indicate that the problem- and emotion-focused mechanisms simultaneously, yet differentially, determine the willingness to offer support.

Understanding the role of behavioural integration in ISD teams: an extension of transactive memory systems concept

The transactive memory system (TMS) has been considered as one critical element for effective teamwork. However, viewing TMS as a second‐order construct that mixes cognitive (specialty and credibility) and behavioural (coordination) components leads to confusion and increases the difficulty in interpreting study results. This study follows the concept proposed by one recent study and attempts to distinguish between behavioural and cognitive components. Furthermore, drawing on the need for diverse members to be integrated behaviourally, we also attempt to extend the TMS research stream by proposing a more comprehensive behavioural component of TMS. We argue that to obtain better teamwork outcomes, information system development (ISD) team members need to integrate the expertise possessed by each individual, make decisions jointly and interlink all individual actions. In light of this, our study aims to replace coordination with team behavioural integration, a more comprehensive behavioural consequence of cognition and explore the critical role of behavioural integration in ISD teams by understanding its impact on ISD teamwork project team performance. The study result, based on data collected from 205 information system project managers, supports our hypotheses that expertise specialty, credibility and their interaction positively affect team behavioural integration. This, in turn, leads to enhanced project team performance.

Coping knowledge boundaries between information system and business disciplines: An intellectual capital perspective

Information system development can be considered a collaboration between users and developers. The inability to leverage the localized knowledge embedded in these two stakeholders hinders software development work to achieve high performance. Exploring the ways to counter this difficulty is then critical. This study applies an intellectual capital perspective to address the issues around spanning the knowledge boundary between developers and users. Our findings highlighted how important effective knowledge boundary spanning is to both product and project quality. Furthermore, three dimensions of intellectual capital increased the degree to which knowledge boundary spanning was effective.

A Study of Online Auction Sellers’ Intention to Switch Platform: The Case of Yahoo!Kimo Versus Ruten_eBay

The study of consumers’ switching from one service provider to another has a long tradition in economics, information systems, and marketing. The emergence of electronic commerce presents new challenges in understanding consumers’ switching intentions in the context of e-commerce in general and online auctions in particular. With the abundance of literature on online auctions, there is a surprising lack of research on auction sellers’ intentions to switch from one online auction platform to another. Using the competition between Yahoo!Kimo and Ruten_eBay, two leading auction platforms in Taiwan, as the backdrop, we developed a research model and collected empirical data based on this real case to study what factors influence auction sellers to switch to a competing service provider. We find that the higher the procedural switching costs, financial switching costs, relational switching costs, site design quality, or interaction quality, the lower the intention of an auction seller to switch to a competing auction service provider. A higher perceived transaction fee, however, leads to a higher switching intention.

Reducing Requirement Incorrectness and Coping with Its Negative Impact in Information System Development Projects

The negative impact of incorrect requirements on information system development (ISD) project performance has long been acknowledged. This study addresses the problem of incorrect requirements by proposing a model that combines the error reduction and coping concepts proposed by Field, Ritzman, Safizadeh, and Downing (2006) with the view that ISD is a knowledge-intensive process. The model hypothesizes that when developers and users possess an understanding of each others primary domain of knowledge, the prevention of incorrect requirements and the mitigation of the negative consequences of incorrect requirements tend to improve project performance. Data collected from 250 ISD professionals on the basis of their experiences of recently completed ISD projects confirmed all of our hypotheses. The results demonstrate that the eliciting of incorrect requirements can be reduced when users and developers possess cross-domain understanding and when requirement analysis methodologies and techniques are available. Furthermore, the negative impact of incorrect requirements on project performance can be mitigated when developers have sufficient ISD knowledge and behavioral knowledge.

The effect of unexpected features on app users' continuance intention

For expectancy-based theories, we separate unexpectedness from confirmation.We incorporate unexpectedness, delight, and customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) into traditional expectancy theories.Satisfaction is more affected by confirmation and delight is more determined by unexpectedness.Delight is relatively important to CCB, satisfaction is associated more with continuance intention. This study incorporates unexpectedness, delight, and customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) into the cognitive, affective, and behavioral stages of traditional expectancy theories, which, in general, contain confirmation, satisfaction, and continuance intention in each stage, respectively. Data collected from 436 app users shows that, from the cognitive stage to the affective stage, satisfaction is affected more by confirmation, and delight is determined more by unexpectedness. In contrast, from the affective stage to the behavioral stage, satisfaction has a greater effect on continuance intention, and delight is more critical for customer citizenship behavior. This study contributes to traditional expectancy theories by highlighting the importance of unexpectedness in the forming of continuance intention, and by illustrating the relatively critical role that components of each stage play in subsequent stages.

Does confirmation always matter? Extending confirmation-based theories

Related theories have highlighted how important confirmation is to satisfaction. However, in their examinations of the effect of confirmation, all past studies viewed consumption experience from an overall perspective only. Given that the utilisation of online services may generate more than one type of benefits to customers, there is a need to decompose the overall concept into different dimensions and re-examine the importance of confirmation from different perspectives. In this study, based on goal-directed and experiential concepts, we separated the benefits provided by online social network services into two types: utilitarian and hedonic. Then, through confirmations, we tested their direct and indirect impacts on satisfaction. Data collected from 653 student-based Facebook users showed that perceived hedonic benefit is more strongly correlated with satisfaction than is perceived utilitarian benefit. In addition, the insignificant path coefficient hints that confirmation of hedonic benefits is not as important as indicated by related theories. We believe that our results generate interesting implications towards both academia and practitioners.

TMS and team behavioural integration

The transactive memory system (TMS) has been considered as one critical element for effective teamwork. However, viewing TMS as a second‐order construct that mixes cognitive (specialty and credibility) and behavioural (coordination) components leads to confusion and increases the difficulty in interpreting study results. This study follows the concept proposed by one recent study and attempts to distinguish between behavioural and cognitive components. Furthermore, drawing on the need for diverse members to be integrated behaviourally, we also attempt to extend the TMS research stream by proposing a more comprehensive behavioural component of TMS. We argue that to obtain better teamwork outcomes, information system development (ISD) team members need to integrate the expertise possessed by each individual, make decisions jointly and interlink all individual actions. In light of this, our study aims to replace coordination with team behavioural integration, a more comprehensive behavioural consequence of cognition and explore the critical role of behavioural integration in ISD teams by understanding its impact on ISD teamwork project team performance. The study result, based on data collected from 205 information system project managers, supports our hypotheses that expertise specialty, credibility and their interaction positively affect team behavioural integration. This, in turn, leads to enhanced project team performance.