Knowledge that Transforms

The business value of information technology (IT) has been debated for a number of years. While some authors have attributed large productivity improvements and substantial consumer benefits to IT, others report that IT has not had any bottom line impact on business profitability. This paper focuses on the fact that while productivity, consumer value, and business profitability are related, they are ultimately separate questions. Accordingly, the empirical results on IT value depend heavily on which question is being addressed and what data are being used. Applying methods based on economic theory, we are able to define and examine the relevant hypotheses for each of these three questions, using recent firm-level data on IT spending by 370 large firms. Our findings indicate that IT has increased productivity and created substantial value for consumers. However, we do not find evidence that these benefits have resulted in supranormal business profitability. We conclude that while modeling techniques need to be improved, these results are collectively consistent with economic theory. Thus, there is no inherent contradiction between increased productivity, increased consumer value, and unchanged business profitability.

Computer-based monitoring, the practice of collecting performance information on employees through the computers they use at work, continues to be a popular topic. How much is known about computer-based monitoring as it is practiced in the workplace? Unfortunately, very little, even though much has been written on the subject. This article reports on five case studies of organizations that employ computer-based monitoring to collect performance data on clerical workers. Although all five organizations utilize similar data collection methods and procedures, no two organizations use the data collected in the same ways to evaluate employee performance. Each site reports different levels of employee satisfaction with monitoring, different abilities of employees to balance demands for work quantity and quality, different levels of work-related illnesses, and different perceptions of supervision. Although these results do not appear surprising on the surface, much of the popular literature on computer-based monitoring stresses the negative effects of monitoring on workers, no matter how or where it is implemented. In this study, the simple presence of computer-based monitoring was not enough to explain differences between sites. Rather, other factors, such as which data were used for evaluation and outside economic pressures, helped to explain variations in monitoring and its effects across sites. Computer-based monitoring, like other information technologies, is a malleable technology.

Information privacy has been called one of the most important ethical issues of the information age. Public opinion polls show rising levels of concern about privacy among Americans. Against this backdrop, research into issues associated with information privacy is increasing. Based on a number of preliminary studies, it has become apparent that organizational practices, individuals’ perceptions of these practices, and societal responses are inextricably linked in many ways. Theories regarding these relationships are slowly emerging. Unfortunately, researchers attempting to examine such relationships through confirmatory empirical approaches may be impeded by the lack of validated instruments for measuring individuals’ concerns about organizational information privacy practices. To enable future studies in the information privacy research stream, we developed and validated an instrument that identifies and measures the primary dimensions of individuals’ concerns about organizational information privacy practices. The development process included examinations of privacy literature; experience surveys and focus groups; and the use of expert judges. The result was a parsimonious 15-item instrument with four subscales tapping into dimensions of individuals’ concerns about organizational information privacy practices. The instrument was rigorously tested and validated across several heterogenous populations, providing a high degree of confidence in the scales’ validity, reliability, and generalizability