Information Systems Proseminar Schedule and Papers

Fall 2006

If not specified, the seminars will be held in Room 138 Wohlers Hall, at 11:00AM on Friday morning.

As is last semester, in addition to the regular paper presentations, we will have a technology series that aim to present new information technologies that have social, economic or organizational implications beyond the technology itself. See more information about this series.

The regular paper series, like before, takes the format of a 45-minute to one-hour presentation followed by discussions.

Paper Series

The Role of IS-Flexibility for the Management of an E-Procurement System: A Case Study

Fei Lee

A number of benefits of e-procurement systems have been identified by
researchers and by practitioners. However, the selection of an appropriate
solution from a large number of available solutions is still considered
difficult in practice. Traditional cost-benefit and business strategy
approaches fall short to provide guidelines regarding an appropriate, let
alone optimal level of information system (IS) flexibility to support
procurement processes, yet there is empirical evidence that insufficient as
well as overly extensive IS flexibility can lead to sub-optimal results. In
this paper, we present a case study of an e-procurement system at a Fortune
100 firm that confirms the importance of actively managing IS flexibility.
We identify the expected time-frame of an e-procurement system as an
important variable for the selection and the management of IS flexibility,
in addition to business process characteristics that have been identified
earlier as having an impact on flexibility requirements.

(pdf)

An Empirical Investigation of E-business Standardization Initiatives: Enablers and Barriers of
Industry-Wide Collaboration in Industry Standard Consortia (Part I)

Kexin Zhao

E-business standards are a critical infrastructure underlying electronic commerce.
In many industries, e-business standards are collaboratively and voluntarily developed
in a neutral industry standard consortium. To a larger extent, the sustainability of an
industry standard consortium depends upon its members’ financial and and technical
contribution and support. Therefore, it is imperative to understand factors that motivate
or hinder firms' collaboration in e-business standards consortia. In this paper, we
propose an organization-industry standard consortia-environment framework to
investigate enablers and barriers of industry-wide collaboration in industry standard
consortia. After completing a pilot study, we are collecting survey data from members
of multiple neutral e-business industry standard consortia. We expect our study to
make both theoretical and managerial contributions. Theoretically, we can better
understand firms' motive behind the private provision of a public good, as many
e-business standards provided by industry standard consortia are freely available
to all potential users and thus exhibit public good properties. Managerially, our
study will help consortia find effective ways to encourage firms' contribution and
help firms to value their consortia membership.

Unravel the Drivers of Online Sharing Communities: An Empirical Investigation

Mu Xia

(A highlight of the paper was the feature headline in the UIUC College of Business eNewsletter.)

Recently user-oriented online sharing communities have seen explosive growth. Two characteristics of these communities set them apart from traditional online message-based communities such as online forums. First, users have no social ties before joining the community. Second, there is little or no “verbal” communication between users. This research investigates the structure and dynamics of online sharing communities using data collected from an IRC music channel from 2001 to 2006, covering all five years of the post-Napster age. We have collected more than three hundred million individual activities, capturing 0.05% of the global music sharing volume. We find that sharers are an essential part of the community and their activities have a dominant impact on the growth of the community. By contrast, free riders have two opposite impacts on sharer retention. More free riders in number make it more likely for a sharer to keep sharing, while more free rider activities discourage sharers from contributing. That is, the existence of free riders, despite the congestion caused by their download activities, does to some degree stabilize the community. Most previous literature examines the online community only from the aggregate level. Our study, nevertheless, distinguish the influence and behavior of different members in the community. Instead of paying only attention to the total number of users, our results suggest that understanding the impact of their core members is critical in investigating the dynamics and the sustainability of online sharing communities.

(PDF)

Information Security Management - From Enterprise To The Extended Enterprise

Stella Shen

Information security risks exist during the information processing
in various business activities.  From an organization's internal information
processing perspective, security management requires managing information
risks from the very top level of the IT infrastructure all the way down to
individual users.  From a supply chain perspective, the boundary of
enterprise security management is extended because of the additional
information risks resulting from the interdependencies between the
organization, its business partners and customers.  In this part of the
study, we will focus on security management issues from an extended
enterprise perspective.

First, we propose a framework for identifying information risks in the
supply chain faced by an organization.  We then conduct an analytical
investigation on the adverse effect information risks could create on a
company's return on investment, and consequently how such risk and control
issues could affect its choice of supply chain strategy, specifically the
choice between global outsourcing and internal development.

Exploring The Value Structure behind Mobile Auction Adoption

Tanya Tang

Internet-based C2C auctions have been one of the more successful applications in electronic
commerce. The major C2C online auction providers are considering extending online auctions
to mobile platforms. A survey was conducted in a leading online auction website in Hong Kong
to investigate the attractiveness of a variety of mobile auction features, intention to adopt, and
willingness to pay among active users. Study 1 shows that online auction users favor informational
features over transactional features and display a general unwillingness to pay for mobile auction
services. The analysis also finds significant differences in preferences between buyers and sellers,
high and low auction usage, and men and women. Study 2 examines the value structure behind
adoption intention drawing on market choice theory. The results show that epistemic value and
emotional value are the two best predictors of adoption over monetary and social value. This
 research contributes to the limited empirical research on mobile auctions and extends the
technology adoption literature in Information Systems.

Software Vendors’ Investment in Unobservable Attributes of Product Quality:
An Economic Approach for Enterprise System Products

Wooje Cho

Our aim was to study software vendors’ investment in the quality attributes
of an enterprise system that are unlikely to be evaluated by customers when
they make a decision on which system to purchase. Unique characteristics of
the domain of the enterprise system market distinguish it from the domain of
traditional product markets. Using game theories, we developed several
models showing the existence of an equilibrium in vendors’ investment under
two different pricing mechanisms. After finding that an investment equilibrium
could exist, we were able to obtain optimal levels of investment in the
unobservable quality attributes of an enterprise system.

(PDF)

Exploring the Black Box of Task−Technology Fit: The Case of Mobile Information Systems

Judith Gebauer (with Mark Ginsburg of Seventh Rank Associates)

Task−technology fit has been developed as a diagnostic tool to determine whether
information systems meet user needs, and has been demonstrated to have a positive impact
on the effectiveness of various types of information systems, such as group support systems
and management support systems. Despite empirical evidence for the relevance of
task−technology fit to improve information system effectiveness, the theory of
task−technology fit provides little guidance of how to determine and operationalize fit for
particular combinations of task and technology. Consequently, the theoretical validity of the
concept of task−technology fit remains limited as does its practical applicability. In this
paper, we present the results of an inductive study to explore the concept and antecedents of
fit for mobile information systems to support mobile professionals. We performed a content
analysis of online user reviews of four mobile technology products with the objective to
identify issues that are relevant to users. The mobile technology products include a
cell−phone, two personal digital assistants (PDAs), and an ultra−light laptop. The identified
issues can be grouped into four conceptual constructs: overall user evaluation, task−related
fit, context−related fit, and technology performance, and are characterized by a lower level of
abstraction than the level of abstraction deployed in previous research studies on
task−technology fit. In order to improve our understanding about how to achieve fit for
particular combinations of task, use context, and technology we performed several statistical
analyses. (1) An exploratory factor analysis yielded five factors, each indeed including a
different set of conceptual constructs; (2) a case−wise analysis indicated user−perceived
strengths and limits of individual devices with respect to the five factors; and (3) the results
of a multiple regression analysis provided insights about the extent to which the five factors
were related with overall technology evaluation. The results presented in the current paper
will serve as input for a larger survey.

(PDF)

Technology Series

Electronic medical records: theory and reality

Phillip Gordon (Bio)

In theory, EHRs would save money and lives, speed care, and make better
care possible. However, EHRs have all the problems of process change and
the introduction of new technology, magnified by the enormous size of
the effort, estimated to cost $156 billion to implement and $48 billion
a year to operate. Even the federal department of Health and Human
Service acknowledges that the failure rate for EHR system
implementations is 30 percent to 50 percent, and some health-care
network providers claim it is as high as 70 percent. The
seminar-presentation will use EHRs as an example of the problems
inherent in any large, complex, distributed IT implementation.

(PowerPoint Slides)

Spring 2006 Presentations

Fall 2005 Presentations

Spring 2005 Presentations

Fall 2004 Presentations

Fall 2003 Proseminar Papers

Please write to Mu Xia for questions and comments.

Last update October 30, 2006.