Web sites provide the key interface for consumer use of the Internet. This research reports on a series of three studies that developand validate Web site usability, design and performance metrics, including download delay, navigability, site content, interactivity, and responsiveness. The performance metric that was developed includes the subconstructs user satisfaction, the likelihood of return, and the frequency of use. Data was collected in 1997, 1999, and 2000 from corporate Web sites via three methods, namely, a jury, third-party ratings, and a software agent. Significant associations between Web site design elements and Web site performance indicate that the constructs demonstrate good nomological validity. Together, the three studies provide a set of measures with acceptable validity and reliability. The findings also suggest lack of significant common methods biases across the jury-collected data, third-party data, and agent-collected data. Results suggest that Web site success is a first-order construct. Moreover, Web site success is significantly associated with Web site download delay (speed of access and display rate within the Web site), navigation (organization, arrangement, layout, and sequencing), content (amount and variety of product information), interactivity (customization and interactivity), and responsiveness (feedback options and FAQs).

Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) is rapidly becoming an influential theoretical perspective in research on advanced information technologies. However, there still exists a paucity of methods to capture critical AST constructs. This paper describes the development of an instrument to capture the extent to which users of an advanced information technology believe they have appropriated its structures faithfully. The development of such instruments is considered critical if the theoretical base provided by AST is to be fully exploited in understanding the use of advanced information technologies. The development procedure, which occurred in the context of the use of an electronic meeting system, was carried out in three phases that began with initial item development and proceeded through an exploratory to a confirmatory phase. Three experiments, two in the exploratory phase and one in the confirmatory phase, were performed. In the final phase, structural equation modeling techniques were used to confirm the convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity of the resulting five-item scale.

Preservation of organizational memory becomes increasingly important to organizations as it is recognized that experiential knowledge is a key to competitiveness. With the development and widespread availability of advanced information technologies (IT), information systems become a vital part of this memory. We analyze existing conceptualizations and task-specific instances of IT-supported organizational memory. We then develop a model for an organizational memory information system (OMIS) that is rooted in the construct of organizational effectiveness. The framework offers four subsystems that support activities leading to organizational effectiveness. These subsystems rest on the foundation of five mnemonic functions that provide for acquisition, retention, maintenance, search, and retrieval of information. We then identify the factors that will limit the success of OMIS implementation, although full treatment of this issue is outside the scope of the paper. To initiate a research agenda on OMIS, we propose an initial contingency framework for OMIS development depending on the organization's environment and its life-cycle stage, and discuss the relationships between an OMIS and organizational learning and decision making.

The primary objective of this study was to identify the perceptual dimensions used by 158 managers and their professional staff at a single large manufacturing firm in differentiating fourteen distinct communication channels available in the firm. Six candidate criteria for differentiating these channels were examined (channel accessibility, information quality, immediate feedback, cue variety, personalization, and receiver accessibility) using multidimensional scaling. A secondary objective involved assessing whether communication direction influenced perceptions. Responses were obtained for two intraorganizational communication directions: lateral and downward. Results indicated that these individuals applied a perceptual framework involving three dimensions: information feedback, accessibility, and quality. Further, a perspective shift from the “message sender” to the “message receiver” was observed in moving from lateral to downward communication. The observations of directional differences demonstrate the inappropriateness of either ignoring communication direction in research designs and of directly transferring research models and instruments that pertain to one communication direction to another direction. Taken together, these results may prove helpful in developing a richer theoretical basis for exploring task/media relationships, which in turn may lead to future research findings providing recommendations for improving individual and organizational performance.

The Quick Response (QR) program is a hierarchical suite of information technologies (IT) and applications designed to improve the performance of retailers. Consultants advise retailers to adopt the program wholesale, implying that more and higher levels of technology are better than less technology and lower levels. Academicians, on the other hand, argue that good technology is “appropriate” technology. That is firms should adopt only those technologies that suit the specific strategic directions pursued by the firm. Who is right? Which approach to investing in IT yields better performance results? Surprisingly, this cross-sectional survey of 80 specialty retailers found more support for the practitioners' claims than for the academicians'. Adoption of the QR program at a minimal level was associated with higher performance, although there was no performance impact due to higher levels of QR use. Firms did appear to match their IT usage to their business strategies, but there was no linkage between strategic alignment and firm performance, and there was surprisingly little variation in business or IT strategy. In short, the findings of our study suggest that both practitioners and academicians need to refine their theories and advice about what makes IT investments pay off.

Reasons for the mixed reactions to today's electronic off-exchange trading systems are examined, and regulatory implications are explored. Information technology (IT) could provide more automated markets, which have lower costs. Yet for an electronic trading system to form a liquid and widely used market, a sufficient number of traders would need to make a transition away from established trading venues and to this alternative way of trading. This transition may not actually occur for a variety of reasons. Two tests are performed of the feasibility and the desirability of transitions to new markets. In the first test, traders in a series of economic experiments demonstrate an ability to make a transition and develop a critical mass of trading activity in a newly opened market. In the second test, simulation is used to compare the floor-based specialist auction in place in most U.S. stock exchanges today to a disintermediated alternative employing screen-based order matching. The results indicate that reducing the role of dealer-intermediaries can actually diminish important measures of market quality. Our findings suggest that the low trading volumes on many off-exchange systems do not result from traders' inability to break away from established trading floors. Rather, today's off-exchange trading systems are not uniformly superior to the trading mechanisms of traditional exchanges. Thus, regulatory actions favoring off-exchange trading systems are not warranted; but, improved designs for IT-based trading mechanisms are needed, and when these are available, they are likely to win significant trading volume from established exchanges.

Few cross-cultural studies have investigated how firms diffuse new information technologies (IT). Still fewer have advanced a theoretical perspective on possible cultural effects. In a world moving rapidly toward corporate multinationalism, this oversight seems notable. As foreign managers locate plants and offices in the U.S. and as American managers establish foreign subsidiaries and offices abroad, it is important for these managers to know in advance as much as possible about the impact of culture on technological innovation. Japan and the U.S. are cases in point. Both have subsidiaries and actively market goods and services in the other country, far flung enterprises for which IT seems to be a natural coordinating mechanism. Yet while U.S. companies exploit the advantages of IT such as E-mail, Japanese firms do not. The Japanese, however, do utilize FAX extensively. Culture is one fruitful explanation for these differences. To examine these two markedly different cultures and the effect of these differences on technological innovation, a large Japanese airline and financial institution were chosen as representative Asian sites. The IT experiences of 209 Japanese knowledge workers are contrasted with those of 711 knowledge workers in comparable firms in the United States on certain dimensions. Using Hofstede's work on culture and social presence/information richness theory as grounding, it was hypothesized that high uncertainty avoidance in Japan and structural features of the Japanese written language could explain Japanese perceptions about new work technologies such as E-Mail and FAX. Furthermore, the theoretical conceptualization in the paper attempts to account for Japanese departures from the U.S. experience. Results from empirical tests verified many, but not all of the predicted differences between Japanese and American knowledge workers. In general, cultural effects seem to play an important role in the predisposition toward and selection of electronic communications media. Surprisingly, responses to traditional media such as face-to-face and telephone were remarkably similar between cultures.

Information security has not been a high priority for most managers. Many permit their installations to be either lightly protected or wholly unprotected, apparently willing to risk major losses from computer abuse. This study, based on the criminological theory of general deterrence, investigates whether a management decision to invest in IS security results in more effective control of computer abuse. Data gathered through a survey of 1,211 randomly selected organizations indicates that security countermeasures that include deterrent administrative procedures and preventive security software will result in significantly lower computer abuse. Knowledge about these relationships is useful for making key decisions about the security function.

We examine the effects of human resource management (HRM) practices (e.g., career development, social support, compensation, and security) on information technology (IT) professionals' job search behavior. Job search is a relatively novel dependent variable in studies of voluntary withdrawal behavior in general and for IT professionals in particular. From a universalistic perspective, HRM practices individually and in combination exhibit independently additive effects on job search behavior. Our study contrasts this perspective with configurational theory, hypothesizing that proposed ideal-type configurations of HRM practices have synergistic effects on job search behavior. We contribute to the IT and broader HRM literature by theoretically explicating and empirically demonstrating with IT professionals the power of configurational theory to explain the relationship between HRM practices and job search behavior. Our empirical results show that two configurations of HRM practices—Human Capital Focused (HCF) and Task Focused (TF), which are high and low on all HRM practices, respectively—exhibit a synergistic relationship with the job search behavior of IT professionals. HCF has lower job search behavior than would be expected based on the independently additive effects of the HRM practices, whereas TF has correspondingly higher job search behavior. Our results also show that less than perfect horizontal fit detracts from the synergy of these extreme configurations. Just as importantly, several other nonextreme configurations of HRM practices exhibit independently additive effects for the HRM practices but not synergy, suggesting that synergy is limited to extreme configurations. We also discuss a number of implications for research and practice.

Organizations today face increasing pressures to integrate their processes across disparate divisions and functional units, in order to remove inefficiencies as well as to enhance manageability. Process integration involves two major types of changes to process structure: (1) synthesizing processes from separate but interdependent subprocesses, and (2) decomposing aggregate processes into distinct subprocesses that are more manageable. We present an approach to facilitate this type of synthesis and decomposition through formal analysis of process structure using a mathematical structure called a metagraph.