Wendy Hui

The impact of employee perceptions of training on organizational commitment and turnover intentions: a study of multinationals in the Chinese service sector

This study examines the impact of employee perceptions of training on organizational commitment, and the latters relationship with turnover intentions. Structured equation modelling is conducted on survey data from 437 Chinese employees of five multinational enterprises operating in the Chinese service sector. The results of the survey are consistent with social exchange theory. They highlight the importance of training as a tool to enhance the affective organizational commitment of employees, and reduce turnover. The findings differ from that of previous studies in non-Chinese settings. No evidence was found to indicate that motivation to learn and the perceived benefits of training impact on the organizational commitment of employees. This may be explained by three factors: the involuntary nature of employee training, the limited career development opportunities on offer to local employees of multinational enterprises and the difficulty employees face in applying learnt skills given cultural differences. The implications for research and practice are discussed.

The effects of perceived organizational support, perceived supervisor support and intra‐organizational network resources on turnover intentions: A study of Chinese employees in multinational enterprises

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of perceived organizational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS) and intra‐organizational network resources on the turnover intentions of the Chinese employees of multinational enterprises.Design/methodology/approach – The study utilized structured equation modeling to analyze survey data from 437 Chinese employees of five multinational enterprises operating in the Chinese service sector.Findings – The study found that POS was positively related to affective organizational commitment, which in turn was negatively related to turnover intentions. A direct relationship was revealed between PSS and turnover intentions, as well as a mediated relationship through POS. In contrast, the relationship between intra‐organizational network resources and turnover intentions was fully mediated through POS.Research limitations/implications – The cross sectional design is a limitation of the study. Another limitation regards the generalisabilit...

The Optimal Number of Versions: Why Does Goldilocks Pricing Work for Information Goods?

The literature in general suggests that selling multiple versions is more profitable than selling only a single version. However, how many versions should be offered is not as clear. Classical pricing studies suggest providing as many versions as the number of customer types, whereas some studies in information systems suggest providing only one or two versions. In reality, firms typically provide more than one or two versions, such as three in the case of Goldilocks pricing. This study explains the discrepancies in these results and observations by showing that, although profit increases with more versions, the marginal benefit of an additional version decreases rapidly. Therefore, firms sell few versions even in the presence of very small versioning-related costs such as menu and cognitive costs. This study analyzes the effects of these costs, and shows that cognitive costs have more profound effects on versioning than menu costs.

Sell by bundle or unit?: Pure bundling versus mixed bundling of information goods

Pure bundling and mixed bundling are two popular pricing strategies for information goods. Pure bundling offers only the product bundle, whereas mixed bundling offers both the bundle and the individual components of the bundle. This paper extends prior research on bundling, which usually assumes consumer heterogeneity along a single attribute of the consumer. However, an individual consumers demand function can be expressed as the interaction of the intercept and the slope of the demand function. We allow for consumer heterogeneity along both these dimensions. The initial willingness-to-pay (IWTP) of a consumer captures the consumers willingness to pay for the first unit of the product while the appetite (APP) of a consumer captures the quantity consumed when the product is free. We find that these two dimensions of heterogeneity have opposing effects. APP heterogeneity encourages the adoption of mixed bundling while IWTP heterogeneity moderates the relationship between APP heterogeneity and the preference for mixed bundling in favor of pure bundling. Our results also help explain why sellers tend to change pricing schemes over time.

Information Security Outsourcing with System Interdependency and Mandatory Security Requirement

The rapid growth of computer networks has led to a proliferation of information security standards. To meet these security standards, some organizations outsource security protection to a managed security service provider (MSSP). However, this may give rise to system interdependency risks. This paper analyzes how such system interdependency risks interact with a mandatory security requirement to affect the equilibrium behaviors of an MSSP and its clients. We show that a mandatory security requirement will increase the MSSPs effort and motivate it to serve more clients. Although more clients can benefit from the MSSPs protection, they are also subjected to greater system interdependency risks. Social welfare will decrease if the mandatory security requirement is high, and imposing verifiability may exacerbate social welfare losses. Our results imply that recent initiatives such as issuing certification to enforce computer security protection, or encouraging auditing of managed security services, may not be advisable.

Brand, Knowledge and False Sense of Security

A 2x2 experiment was used to study the effects of brand name and knowledge on the adoption of antivirus software. Subjects were randomly assigned to groups and presented with different brands and product choice sets. It was found that (1) brand name affects product choice, (2) a strong brand may tend to induce a false sense of security and lead to poor produce choice, and (3) knowledge can reduce consumers’ reliance on brand name in security technology adoption decision.

A study of gamer experience and virtual world behaviour

This paper reports a study which examined the impact of computer game experience on behaviour observed inside a virtual world. A social networking world was used, which was owned and run by the research team and a dataset capturing the behaviour of 195 subjects was extracted from the worlds event logs. Four broad areas were analysed: communication, movement, avatar creation and world customization. Highly significant differences were found in text communication. Less significant differences were found in movement and avatar creation, and none were found in the customization of the world.

Is technology-mediated learning made equal for all? Examining the influences of gender and learning style

The current research investigates the equality of students’ learning outcomes in technology-mediated learning. We study important individual differences and focus on the influences of gender and learning style. We perform two experimental studies that employ methodologically rigorous designs, multiple learning outcome measures, and previously validated measurement scales. Specifically, we examine learning effectiveness, perceived learnability, and learning satisfaction in technologymediated learning, using classroom-based face-to-face learning as a comparative baseline. Our investigations address some limitations commonly found in many prior studies, including instrument reliability and confounding factors. Overall, our findings suggest that students benefit from technology-mediated learning differently, dependent on their gender. For example, female students consider technology-mediated learning more effective and satisfactory than male students, but their learning motivation is significantly lower than that of their male counterparts. Learning style also matters, perhaps to a lesser extent. Students who rely more on concrete experience, as opposed to abstract conceptualization, find the course materials delivered through technology-mediated learning more difficult to learn. Our findings have several implications for research and practice, which are discussed.

Effects of Smiling and Gender on Trust Toward a Recommendation Agent

This study seeks to determine whether a recommendation agent’s smile and gender affect users’ trust toward the agent. We also investigate gender differences in trust toward recommendation agents of different genders and facial expressions. We present findings from a 2x2 experiment (male vs. female and smiling vs. non-smiling agents). In the context of laptop shopping, we found that on average smiling agents are perceived to be more competent than non-smiling agents and male agents are perceived to be more competent than female agents. There is a significant interaction effect between an agents smile and gender on trust in benevolence. Specifically, male subjects tend to believe that smiling agents are more competent than non-smiling agents, while female subjects are less sensitive to the agent’s smile. Interestingly, female subjects perceive male agents to be more competent than female agents, while male subjects are almost indifferent toward the agent’s gender. Among the female subjects, trust in benevolence is highest toward a smiling male agent. Our results suggest that the gender and facial expressions of a recommendation agent should be considered when designing a virtual salesperson for online stores.

Estimating the Number of Genuine and Fraudulent Clicks in the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Model

A simple method that is immune to click fraud is proposed to estimate the number of fraudulent and genuine clicks. It involves the use of web bugs and it relies on the assumption that all genuine clicks come from converted users (i.e., users who have made a predefined action, such as a purchase or a subscription). The implications of the violation of this assumption are discussed. The contribution of the paper is to demonstrate that it is possible to estimate the number of fraudulent clicks without an operationalization of click fraud, as suggested by Tuzhilin (2006).