Impacts of employee participation and trust on e-business readiness, benefits, and satisfaction

An increasing number of firms have invested large sums in implementing electronic business (e-business). Nowadays, while the e-businesses are fostering rapid industrial growth, employees are the one who factually engage with information exchange, communication and support e-business processes. However, prior literature has paid scant attention in determining e-business value and its drivers from employee perspective. Thus, the present study attempts to investigate how user participation and trust drives e-business value in terms of e-business readiness, e-business benefits, and e-business satisfaction. For this sake, data collected from 143 employees at Taiwanese IT related firms and analyzed with partial least square (PLS) structural equation approach reveal that trust and user participation were significant precursors of employee e-business satisfaction. The results strongly support the contention that trust directly affects e-business satisfaction, and indirectly affects it through e-business readiness and e-business benefits. The research model and findings will help managers implement e-business successfully and offer valuable references for researchers interested in developing related theories.     

Assessment of employees’ perceptions of service quality and satisfaction with e-business

In a competitive environment of frequent and rapid change, electronic business (e-business), whose supply, production, and logistics and distribution networks are enabled digitally, is increasingly dependent on electronic interconnections that are innovative in their functionality. Conceivably, its ability to deliver functions and services is closely associated with and helpful for the completion of employees’ tasks and jobs, leading to service quality being critically important for both the employees and e-business (EB). On the other hand, since EB utilizes enterprise applications, user satisfaction, as a surrogate measure of information system (IS) or information technology (IT) effectiveness/success is also important for enterprise applications success. Thus, this research attempts to extrapolate the results of marketing research concerning customers’ perceptions of service quality and IS/IT research as to employees’ perceptions of service quality with EB. First, we revise the SERVQUAL instrument to fit the new context of EB and measure employees’ perceived service quality with EB. Based on a survey of 161 respondents practicing mostly in seven international electronic businesses in Taiwan, a 13-item EB-SERVQUAL instrument is proposed. This can be used to improve and diagnose the service quality of EB. Second, we examine user satisfaction with enterprise applications and its causal link in relation to service quality with EB. The instrument and our findings in this paper will be valuable to researchers and practitioners interested in designing, implementing, and managing EB.     

Assessing the benefits from e-business transformation through effective enterprise management

This paper reports on research carried out in 1999–2001 on the use of e-business applications in enterprise resource planning (ERP)-based organisations. Multiple structured interviews were used to collect data on 11 established organisations from a diverse range of industries. The findings are analysed according to the level of sophistication of e-business models and their transformational impact on the organisation. Early adopters of e-business show a trend towards cost reductions and administrative efficiencies from e-procurement and self-service applications used by customers and employees. More mature users focus on strategic advantage and generate this through an evolutionary model of organisational change. Two complex case studies of e-business integration with global suppliers and their corporate customers are analysed to identify specific stages of benefits accrual through the e-business transformation process. Collectively, the set of case studies is used to demonstrate the increased benefits derived from an e-business architecture based on a network of ERP-enabled organisations.     

Work environments for employee creativity

Innovative organisations need creative employees who generate new ideas for product or process innovation. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the effect of personal, social-organisational and physical factors on employee creativity. Based on this framework, an instrument to analyse the extent to which the work environment enhances creativity is developed. This instrument was applied to a sample of 409 employees and support was found for the hypothesis that a creative work environment enhances creative performance. This paper illustrates how the instrument can be used in companies to select and implement improvements. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: The ergonomics discipline addresses the work environment mainly for improving health and safety and sometimes productivity and quality. This paper opens a new area for ergonomics: designing work environments for enhancing employee creativity in order to strengthen an organisation's capability for product and process innovation and, consequently, its competitiveness.     

Dimensions of Employee Energy and Their Differences: Evidence from Chinese Insurance Companies

The purpose of this research is to explore the structure of employee energy and analyze its differences in demographic variables as well as the differences between groups. The study collected 294 questionnaires of employees in Chinese insurance companies. Confirmatory factor analysis and one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used in the data analysis. The results showed that employee energy is a three‐dimensional concept that comprises basal energy, growing energy, and behavioral energy. Employee energy only has significant differences on monthly income and the level of positions, and the employees who have high employee energy share the characteristic of both high monthly income and the level of positions. Respondents were divided into four groups: 1) high‐positive‐energy, 2) low‐positive‐energy, 3) low‐negative‐energy, and 4) high‐negative‐energy employees. High‐positive‐energy employees showed the characteristics of high basal energy, high growing energy, and high behavioral energy, showing a feature of plump wings. Finally, this research put forward suggestions to provide a reference for energy management. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Organization Security Metrics: Can Organizations Protect Themselves?

ABSTRACT

Organizations normally do not possess a way to communicate those needs back to the rest of an organization. This paper demonstrates that organizations are vigilant to activity within their environment, so this research project will focus on process improvement to better organizations through internal processes. Prior to this project, Company X was unable to communicate and address threats to their organization. Prior to this project, each employee was not trained on security. However, each employee understood the norms and values of company processes on an individual level. Each employee was able to contribute details of security issues as they perceived them to make a comprehensive security model. This Security Working Group (SWG) project describes the steps necessary to create a self-educating, self-perpetuating process that spurns co-generative learning among an entire organization. Security training prepared each employee to be more attentive to risks to potential security issues. The result of this research proves that employees can detect threats in an organization with relatively little training.     

基于均值聚类的员工行为分析方法

针对大量异构数据下企业员工潜在行为规律挖掘问题,提出一种基于均值聚类的行为分析方法。以某科研院所员工行为数据为基础,建立行为分析模型,对企业员工门禁刷卡数据和专业日常办公软件数据进行行为特征提取和选择,采用K-Means聚类分析方式分析行为特征。最终从工作态度上,大致可以将员工分为勤奋型、散漫性和普通型;从岗位特征上,大致可以将员工分为普通类、专业类和管理类。并且通过对聚类结果分析,挖掘出员工一些隐藏的行为特征规律。通过对现场相关人员调研,并结合员工真实工作性质、岗位特点,验证了在此场景下应用员工行为所产生的数据,结合聚类算法,在企业员工行为分析方面可以取得较理想的效果。     

Measuring satisfaction with business-to-employee systems

Marketing the products of other companies within an individual company Intranet can benefit both employees and the company itself. Understanding what constitutes a satisfying experience on the part of the employees is crucial for developing successful business-to-employee systems. While end-user computing satisfaction has been studied extensively, new aspects such as purchasing convenience, product prices in the system and product delivery have to be included. This study develops an instrument for reliably and accurately measuring business-to-employee success. Test–retest reliability and construct validity are examined. The results of this study show that convenience, delivery, interface, accuracy, price and security influence employee assessments of satisfaction. Managers can use the instrument developed here to assess the success of their business-to-employee systems.     

Employee turnover: a neural network solution

In today's working environment, a company's human resources are truly the only sustainable competitive advantage. Product innovations can be duplicated, but the synergy of a company's workforce cannot be replicated. It is for this reason that not only attracting talented employees but also retaining them is imperative for success. The study of employee turnover has attempted to explain why employees leave and how to prevent the drain of employee talent. This paper focuses on using a neural network (NN) to predict turnover. If turnover can be found to be predictable the identification of at-risk employees will allow us to focus on their specific needs or concerns in order to retain them in the workforce. Also, by using a Modified Genetic Algorithm to train the NN we can also identify relevant predictors or inputs, which can give us information about how we can improve the work environment as a whole. This research found that a NNSOA trained NN in a 10-fold cross validation experimental design can predict with a high degree of accuracy the turnover rate for a small mid-west manufacturing company.     

Potential of critical e-applications for engaging SMEs in e-business: a provider perspective

Against a background of the low engagement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in e-business, this paper investigates the emergence of, and potential for, critical e-applications defined as ‘an e-business application, promoted by a trusted third party, which engages a significant number of SMEs by addressing an important shared business concern within an aggregation.’ By a review of secondary data and empirical investigation with service providers and other intermediaries, the research shows that such applications can facilitate the engagement of SME aggregations. There are three key findings, namely: the emergence of aggregation-specific e-business applications; the emergence of collaboratively based ‘one to many’ business models; and the importance of trusted third parties in the adoption of higher-level complexity e-business applications by SMEs. Significantly, this work takes a deliberately provider perspective and complements the already considerable literature on SME IT adoption from a user and network perspective. In terms of future research, the importance of a better conceptual understanding of the impact of complexity on the adoption of information technologies by SMEs is highlighted.     

‘What a waste of time’: An examination of cybersecurity legitimacy

Managers who oversee cybersecurity policies commonly rely on managerial encouragement (e.g., rewards) and employee characteristics (e.g., attitude) to drive compliant behaviour. However, whereas some cybersecurity initiatives are perceived as reasonable by employees, others are viewed as a ‘waste of time’. This research introduces employee judgements of cybersecurity legitimacy as a new angle for understanding employee compliance with cybersecurity policies over time. Drawing on theory from the organisational legitimacy and cybersecurity literature, we conduct a three-wave survey of 529 employees and find that, for each separate wave, negative legitimacy judgements mediate the relationship between management support and compliance, as well as between cybersecurity inconvenience and compliance. Our results provide support for cybersecurity legitimacy as an important influence on employee compliance with cybersecurity initiatives. This is significant because it highlights to managers the importance of not simply expecting compliant employee behaviour to follow from the introduction of cybersecurity initiatives, but that employees need to be convinced that the initiatives are fair and reasonable. Interestingly, we did not find sufficient support for our expectation that the increased likelihood of a cybersecurity incident will moderate the legitimacy-policy compliance relationship. This result suggests that the legitimacy perceptions of employees are unyielding to differences in the risk characteristics of the cybersecurity incidents facing organisations.     

The mediating effect of rewarding on the relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction

Employee support provides enormous benefits to help sustain a competitive advantage, respond to changes more quickly than competitors, and position the organization ahead of others. Awareness of this fact triggers organizations to prepare new motivational programs and practices. Employee involvement and rewards are among the many ways to achieve employee job satisfaction and motivational needs. Employee involvement entails giving employees an opportunity to influence decisions and actions regarding their jobs. Furthermore, rewards have the potential to prompt employees to act in line with organizational goals. This study aims to examine the relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction based on the mediation effect of rewarding. Four hundred employees from the financial sector responded to a questionnaire. The relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction was tested using hierarchical linear regression analysis. Results revealed that rewarding does mediate the relationship between employee involvement and job satisfaction. Organizations that give priority to employee needs and motivational processes should take both employee involvement and rewarding into consideration.     

Dimensions of Employee Satisfaction as Determinants of Organizational Commitment in the Hotel Industry

In today's dynamic environment, the role of employees and their level of organizational commitment are becoming increasingly important for business success, which is especially relevant for the service industry in general and for the tourism sector in particular because of problems associated with employee turnover, loyalty strategies with the customer, and so forth. Employee satisfaction is considered an essential ingredient for developing organizational commitment. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of different facets of employee job satisfaction, that is, job conditions, reward system, relations with superiors and co‐workers, organizational human resources (HR) policies, on employees’ organizational commitment in the hotel industry. The research hypotheses are tested with a sample of 760 hotel employees on Gran Canaria, Spain. The results show the relevance of the working conditions, direct rewards, relationships with managers, and the HR policies in order to develop a high level of organizational commitment.     

A model for employee performance trend analysis of distribution centers

To enhance the operational efficiency of a distribution center (DC), the DC managers have to identify the variations of employee performance with time and use the appropriate management strategies for employee rewards and training. However, the DC managers usually lack a systematic approach for analyzing the employee performance trend to determine the employees to be rewarded or trained. To solve the issue, this research develops a model for analysis of employee performance trend based on an employee performance estimation model. The proposed model consists of two main modules—namely, Derivation of Performance Control Limits (DPCL) and Appraisal of Performance Trend (APT). In the DPCL module, the employee performance can be estimated and the upper and lower control limits of employee performance can be determined. After that, by application of the APT module, the indices of employee performance trend can be derived and can be represented visually for efficient decision of DC managers. On the basis of the proposed model, this research also establishes a Web‐based system for employee performance trend analysis (namely, EPTA platform). Furthermore, a real‐world case was used to evaluate the applicability of the proposed model and platform. By application of the improved analysis diagram generated by the EPTA platform, the uncertain variations of performance trend can be removed to enhance the accuracy of performance trend analysis. As a result, the DC managers can efficiently determine whether the performance trends of employees indicate significant performance increases or decreases by using the proposed model and system. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The impact of interaction quality factors on the effectiveness of Web-based information system: the mediating role of user satisfaction

Recently, IS researchers have focused on the assessment of Web-based information system (WBIS) at the individual level as it highly contributes to the organizations’ employees. The evaluation and development of WBIS is significantly needed because the top management is in need of justifying their costly IT investment in terms of its impacts on employee performance. For this purpose, this study is primarily concerned with the development and validation of new multidimensional instrument, and also a theoretical framework for assessing the impacts of user interface quality, online communication quality, and user satisfaction on the effectiveness of Web employee portals. The effectiveness is assessed in terms of contextual performance. In a large-scale study, a sample of 384 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees respondents are gathered in order to validate and check the reliability of the adapted study instrument. The results of validity and reliability analysis provide enough confidence to proceed toward validating the proposed theoretical framework. The results of multiple-regression analysis indicate that there is a positive significant relationship between user interface quality, communication quality, user satisfaction, and effectiveness at significance level (sig. < 0.01). As another important point, the results of hierarchical regression showed that user satisfaction has a mediating role on the relationship between user interface quality, communication quality, and contextual employee performance. The findings and implications of this research are discussed. Finally, it is expected that this study would contribute to empirical studies in the fields of IS and user behavior assessment.     

Employee Goal Orientation,Work Unit Goal Orientation and Employee Creativity

For employee creativity to occur, organizations must build a context conducive to creativity, in addition to identifying employees with creative potential. Complementing and extending earlier research, we develop and test a cross‐level model about how work unit goal orientation might relate to employee creativity. We also theorize and examine the mediating role of employee information elaboration linking work unit goal orientation and employee creativity. We conduct a questionnaire survey based on multi‐source data from 340 employees comprising 53 teams in eight Taiwanese organizations. The results indicate that the work unit goal orientation is positively, whereas the work unit performance‐avoidance orientation is negatively, related to employee creativity through employee information elaboration. Furthermore, work unit goal orientation also plays a cross‐level moderating role: the positive relationship between individual‐level learning orientation and information elaboration is stronger when work unit learning orientation is higher, but weaker when work unit avoidance orientation is higher.     

On‐the‐job Innovation: The Impact of Job Design and Human Resource Management through Production Ownership

A growing number of practitioners and academics endorse that the ability of organizations to foster, develop and use the innovative potential of their employees contributes to organizational success. Yet empirical investigation of individual innovation processes is lacking. In this research we address the question of whether both more flexibility in an employees’ job design and commitment‐oriented HRM activities promote individual innovative work behaviour. Findings suggest that a multifunctional job design and the perceived HRM system promote employee involvement in innovative activities through increased feelings of ownership for work‐related issues and problems.     

Technostress under different organizational environments: An empirical investigation

Today’s pervasive information and communications technologies (ICTs) enable us to get connected almost anywhere at anytime. ICTs such as the Internet, the advanced wireless technologies and mobile communications networks are becoming increasingly indispensable in many aspects of business and everyday life. But to keep up with the fast advancing pace of the new ICTs, employees have to constantly renew their technical skills as well as enduring pressure from a more complex system and higher expectations for productivity. This often leads to ICT related technostress experienced by employees in many organizations. Studies have found technostress to have significant negative impact on employee productivity. Based on large-scale survey responses Chinese employees, this paper investigates the effects of different organizational environment settings on employee technostress levels. The results show that employees from more centralized companies often perceive more technostress. In addition, in organizations that are both highly centralized and highly innovative, the overall technostress level is the highest. On the other hand, in organizations with low centralization and low innovation, technostress is the lowest. This research will provide a foundation for organizations to understand and alleviate technostress, thus improving employee performance.     

An Approach to Evaluating E-Business Information Systems Projects

Capital investments in the e-business infrastructure add complexity to the IT payoff question because e-business interorganizational investments are deployed across multiple platforms, projects, vendors and partners. Traditional MIS research has been devoted to measuring the payoff from information technology (IT) investment without any specific focus on e-business. Flaws in the mature MIS performance measures seem to yield weak guidance for managers when evaluating IT success, thus diluting the potential for these measures to be adapted for use in the new e-business environment. A review of the conventional MIS payoff literature indicates that these measures may be incomplete, inaccurate, or inefficient for application to electronic commerce investments. This paper brings four new points to the e-business IT investment evaluation dialogue: (1) we first explore performance measurement validity flaws in our long established measures; (2) the paper discusses a two-by-two matrix delineating the gap between the quantitative versus qualitative performance measures of management information systems (MIS) initiatives; (3) sample e-business payoff techniques are discussed and reviewed in light of these historical imperfections, and (4) fourth, the paper proposes and describes an innovative framework derived from production theory economics for future research in evaluating e-business MIS implementations.     

Nontechnical Deterrence Effects of Mild and Severe Internet Use Policy Reminders in Reducing Employee Internet Abuse

This two-stage longitudinal study examines how employee Internet abuse may be reduced by nontechnical deterrence methods, specifically via organizational acceptable use policies (AUPs). This study used actual employee usage and audit logs (not self-reporting survey measures) to monitor the web activity of employees. In stage 1, a mild AUP reminder sent to company employees resulted in a 12% decrease in employee Internet abuse. In stage 2, a more severe AUP reminder resulted in a 33% decrease in employee Internet abuse. For both stages, the AUP warning (regardless of severity level) resulted in an immediate and significant decrease in employee nonwork Internet use. Results indicate that the severe AUP treatment was more effective in reducing and maintaining lower levels of employee nonwork Internet use than the mild AUP treatment. Under the mild AUP treatment, employee nonwork Internet use levels returned to their pretreatment levels after only one week. However, under the severe AUP treatment, employee nonwork Internet use levels were lower than the mild AUP treatment and remained consistently lower than their pretreatment levels even after three weeks. These results suggest that nontechnical deterrence methods in the form of organizational IT use policies may constitute an effective approach to reducing employee Internet abuse, particularly if AUP policies are clear with regard to related sanctions and penalties for employee noncompliance.