An integrative model of trust on IT outsourcing: Examining a bilateral perspective

Trust has been considered a central aspect of successful IT outsourcing. Although a great deal of interest in trust has been described, there are very few theoretical models in the IT outsourcing literature to explain mutual trust, its role, and its impact in IT outsourcing. This study proposes a trust-based relationship research model to assess the perceived IT outsourcing success in terms of (1) mutual trust with its temporal dimension of initial trust and initial distrust, and (2) knowledge sharing with the moderating effect of mutual dependency. This model was then validated and applied in a study involving organizations in Korea. The data was collected and analyzed to understand initial trust, initial distrust, knowledge sharing, and mutual dependency as contributing factors to success in IT outsourcing. The results show that mutual trust between the service receiver and provider is very important for knowledge sharing and outsourcing success, and is affected by the initial perception to each other’s partner at the beginning of the outsourcing process. Interestingly, this study also shows that initial trust is considered a significant factor in the perception of mutual trust from the service receiver’s perspective, but not from the service provider’s viewpoint. The results help extend our understanding of critical success factors in outsourcing success and of different standpoints between the service receiver and provider.

Analyzing IT maintenance outsourcing decision from a knowledge management perspective

IT outsourcing is a complex and opaque decision problem. Managers facing a decision about IT outsourcing have difficulty in framing what needs to be thought about further in their discourses. Framing is one of the most crucial steps of human decision making and needs to be assisted to better understand a decision situation. In this research, we examine a number of decision primitives in the context of an IT outsourcing decision situation. We demonstrate how the decision primitives can be employed so that managers can probe deep to better understand a decision situation and to establish a decision basis. In the organizational setting, we exemplify the use of the decision primitives in relation to the perceived outsourcing implications for the managers looking for assistance in accommodating a knowledge management perspective on IT outsourcing. Consequently, we induce insight and a guideline on how to use knowledge management for effective outsourcing in one of the leading financial institutes in Europe.

Realizing business value of agile IT applications: antecedents in the supply chain networks

This research develops a framework for organizational value creation from agile IT applications. Based on the four themes in the business value research—business process perspective, complementarities, application level of analysis, and extent of use—three antecedents (organizational fit, process assimilation, and network adoption) are identified as pre-requisites for realizing the value of agile supply chain applications. Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems are used as examples, and two case studies for their implementation in the electronics and consumer goods industry are reported to support the propositions. The theories of diffusion of innovation, complementarities, network externalities, and technology structuration are applied to develop the propositions for fit, assimilation, and network effects. Information sharing and industry clockspeed are identified as the moderating factors in the proposed model. The framework has both managerial and research relevance. The research guides managers regarding ways to more fully realize the value of agile applications and forms a basis for future research on the business value of IT applications.

The impact of cultural differences in offshore outsourcing—Case study results from German–Indian application development projects

Offshore outsourcing to vendors in foreign countries causes unique challenges which need to be understood and managed effectively. This paper explores cultural differences in IS offshoring arrangements involving German client organizations that outsource application development activities to Indian vendors. For this purpose, a research framework is developed based on both theoretical considerations and specific empirical observations from multiple case studies. The goal is to (1) explore the nature of cultural differences in offshore outsourcing arrangements in depth and to (2) analyze the relationship between those cultural differences and offshore outsourcing success. Based on the case findings, implications and practices for the management of offshore development projects are outlined. The results indicate that cultural differences in terms of power distance, IS designer values, and an active versus passive working attitude critically affect several dimensions of relationship quality, thereby influencing offshore outsourcing success. A clear definition of roles and mechanisms, strong leadership, and an active management of culture by adapting to either the client’s or the vendor’s national culture appeared to be effective ways to manage cultural differences.

High performance motion detection: some trends toward new embedded architectures for vision systems

The goal of this article is to compare some optimised implementations on current high performance platforms in order to highlight architectural trends in the field of embedded architectures and to get an estimation of what should be the components of a next generation vision system. We present some implementations of robust motion detection algorithms on three architectures: a general purpose RISC processor—the PowerPC G4—a parallel artificial retina dedicated to low level image processing—Pvlsar34—and the Associative Mesh, a specialized architecture based on associative net. To handle the different aspects and constraints of embedded systems, execution time and power consumption of these architectures are compared.

Inside the adaptive enterprise: an information technology capabilities perspective on business process agility

Recent innovations in utility computing, web services, and service-oriented architectures, combined with a growing array of IT skills, have improved firms’ ability to be more agile in responding to change. Using the resource-based view of the firm, prior research suggests that IT resources, in isolation, are unlikely to yield superior performance and so as firms try to boost their agility, the question becomes how to configure IT resources to prepare for, or react to, change. In this paper, we posit that managerial IT capabilities based on IT-business partnerships, strategic planning, and ex-post IT project analysis lead to the development of technical IT capabilities associated with a flexible IT infrastructure which in turn drives agility or a firm’s ability to react to change in its products and markets. Using data from matched surveys of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we find that managerial and technical capabilities affect agility. In further testing, we reveal that in a stable setting, technical IT capabilities are more important to agility than managerial IT capabilities, while in a dynamic setting, the opposite is true. Thus, for firms operating in volatile markets, effective models of managerial IT governance are essential for delivering superior agility or adaptiveness.

Ethical regulations on robotics in Europe

There are only a few ethical regulations that deal explicitly with robots, in contrast to a vast number of regulations, which may be applied. We will focus on ethical issues with regard to “responsibility and autonomous robots”, “machines as a replacement for humans”, and “tele-presence”. Furthermore we will examine examples from special fields of application (medicine and healthcare, armed forces, and entertainment). We do not claim to present a complete list of ethical issue nor of regulations in the field of robotics, but we will demonstrate that there are legal challenges with regard to these issues.

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Relating research to practice: imperative or circumstance?

This paper provides a starting point for thinking beyond a research–practice divide and discusses possible new conceptualizations of intervention and the role of IT research in contemporary organizational settings. ‘IT research’ denotes a conglomerate of overlapping research conducted under the headings of Information Systems, Systems Development, Critical IS Research and Participatory Design. The paper applies this joint notion of IT research and the IT researcher to draw parallels across these niches of research regarding the question of intervention. Through an analysis of selected field study events, a prominent notion of intervention (as being active as opposed to being passive) is reworked in terms of intervention as circumstance, a circumstantial interplay of situated practices. In closing, subsequent possibilities for repositioning the IT researcher are discussed in terms of reflexivity, facilitation or being a trickster.

Information technology and the autonomy–control duality: toward a theory

We examine the relationship between firms’ human resources (HR) practices and their information technology (IT) practices, focusing on the dichotomy between autonomy and control. We define facilitating HR practices as those that exhibit the following characteristics: worker autonomy, connectedness, learning, valuing individuals, trust, and flexibility in business processes. We then characterize facilitating IT practices, which are practices that facilitate employee collaboration, autonomy, and wider access to information. We contrast these categories of practice to traditional HR and monitoring IT, respectively. Drawing from theories of complementarities and configuration, we propose that alignment between HR and IT strategies originates at the level of individual practices. We consider the effects of this alignment on worker performance. We then ground our discussion in exploratory empirical and qualitative results.

TimeBank evolution as a community resource for TimeML parsing

TimeBank is the only reference corpus for TimeML, an expressive language for annotating complex temporal information. It is a rich resource for a broad range of research into various aspects of the expression of time and temporally related events. This paper traces the development of TimeBank from its initial—and somewhat noisy—version (1.1) to a substantially revised release (1.2), now available via the Linguistic Data Consortium. The development path is motivated by the encouraging empirical results of TimeML-compliant annotators developed on the basis of TimeBank 1.1, and is informed by a detailed study of the characteristics of that initial release, which guides a clean-up process turning TimeBank 1.2 into a consistent and robust community resource.

An empirical study of the impact of team size on software development effort

In this paper, we investigate the impact of team size on the software development effort. Using field data of over 200 software projects from various industries, we empirically test the impact of team size and other variables—such as software size in function points, ICASE tool and programming language type—on software development effort. Our results indicate that software size in function points significantly impacts the software development effort. The two-way interactions between function points and use of ICASE tool, and function points and language type are significant as well. Additionally, the interactions between team size and programming language type, and team size and use of ICASE tool were all significant.

A binomial software reliability model based on coverage of structural testing criteria

A new approach to software reliability modeling is discussed where variables indirectly related with software reliability are used to provide additional information for the modeling process. Previous studies, empirical and theoretical evidences, and results from experiments indicate that there is a strong relationship between software reliability and coverage of program elements required to be exercised by structural testing criteria. This paper develops a binomial type coverage-based software reliability model through the definition of a coverage-based failure rate function. The Binomial software reliability Model Based on Coverage—BMBC—is proposed and discussed. In the BMBC test data between failures is used instead of time as independent variable; the model was assessed with test data from a real application, making use of the following structural testing criteria: all-nodes, all-edges, and potential-uses—a data-flow based family of testing criteria. The results from our experiments have shown that our modeling approach has some advantages over some traditional reliability models and points to a very promising research direction in software reliability.

Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking application

A number of mobile applications have emerged that allow users to locate one another. However, people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with this class of software, suggesting that broad adoption may only happen to the extent that these concerns are adequately addressed. In this article, we report on our work on PeopleFinder, an application that enables cell phone and laptop users to selectively share their locations with others (e.g. friends, family, and colleagues). The objective of our work has been to better understand people’s attitudes and behaviors towards privacy as they interact with such an application, and to explore technologies that empower users to more effectively and efficiently specify their privacy preferences (or “policies”). These technologies include user interfaces for specifying rules and auditing disclosures, as well as machine learning techniques to refine user policies based on their feedback. We present evaluations of these technologies in the context of one laboratory study and three field studies.

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Integrated A.I. systems

The broad range of capabilities exhibited by humans and animals is achieved through a large set of heterogeneous, tightly integrated cognitive mechanisms. To move artificial systems closer to such general-purpose intelligence we cannot avoid replicating some subset—quite possibly a substantial portion—of this large set. Progress in this direction requires that systems integration be taken more seriously as a fundamental research problem. In this paper I make the argument that intelligence must be studied holistically. I present key issues that must be addressed in the area of integration and propose solutions for speeding up rate of progress towards more powerful, integrated A.I. systems, including (a) tools for building large, complex architectures, (b) a design methodology for building realtime A.I. systems and (c) methods for facilitating code sharing at the community level.

Legal safeguards for privacy and data protection in ambient intelligence

To get the maximum benefit from ambient intelligence (AmI), we need to anticipate and react to possible drawbacks and threats emerging from the new technologies in order to devise appropriate safeguards. The SWAMI project took a precautionary approach in its exploration of the privacy risks in AmI and sought ways to reduce them. It constructed four “dark scenarios” showing possible negative implications of AmI, notably for privacy protection. Legal analysis of the depicted futures showed the shortcomings of the current legal framework in being able to provide adequate privacy protection in the AmI environment. In this paper, the authors, building upon their involvement in SWAMI research as well as the further advancement of EU privacy analysis, identify various outstanding issues regarding the legal framework that still need to be resolved in order to deal with AmI in an equitable and efficacious way. This article points out some of the lacunae in the legal framework and postulates several privacy-specific safeguards aimed at overcoming them.

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Efficient corpus development for lexicography: building the New Corpus for Ireland

In a 12-month project we have developed a new, register-diverse, 55-million-word bilingual corpus—the New Corpus for Ireland (NCI)—to support the creation of a new English-to-Irish dictionary. The paper describes the strategies we employed, and the solutions to problems encountered. We believe we have a good model for corpus creation for lexicography, and others may find it useful as a blueprint. The corpus has two parts, one Irish, the other Hiberno-English (English as spoken in Ireland). We describe its design, collection and encoding.

Learning from others within the landscape of “transitional economies” and the challenge in ICT development for African countries

This paper presents the experience of good practices and bench learning in the EU for sustainable development in transitional economies. In exploring key issues of ICT development for economic growth in African countries, it will showcase how information and experience from different geographical/economic sectors within the EU have been collated into a comprehensive knowledge system, and shared among users, using both electronic and traditional methods—see The BEEP Project . It will then discuss how this good practice model could be developed further as a Pan-African Initiative, as part of the IST Africa Programme for participating countries, to enable them share experience and information in their attempt to narrow the digital divide for sustainable growth.

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E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

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How to Use Information Technology for Cooperative Work: Development of Shared Technological Frames

Technological frames, participants’ assumptions about information technology (IT), and in particular about the usage of the technology for everyday cooperative work, are a relevant factor for IT related behavior. Incongruent technological frames are associated with problems during the application and use of a new IT in an organization. This paper presents a field study which applies a pre–post-design in a freight forwarding company. During face-to-face discussion the participating employees of the company negotiated agreements regarding the future usage of a new mobile technology system for every day cooperative work between dispatcher agents and truck drivers. To support the development of shared technological frames the moderation technique STWT (socio-technical walkthrough) was applied. The results describe the structural changes in technological frames, and show to what extent these were shared by the participants. Based on the results possibilities to improve support for the development of shared technological frames are discussed.