The adoption of consortium B2B e-marketplaces: An exploratory study

Despite the considerable number of electronic B2B marketplaces formed and the benefits cited as arising from their use, many have gone out of business. This exploratory study seeks to provide a qualitative exposition of the specific factors influencing the adoption of consortium-owned B2B e-marketplaces. The study is based upon case studies of twelve companies trading through three different consortium B2B e-marketplaces. Twenty-six specific factors are identified and their impact on adoption is discussed. The identification of a significant number of factors specific to this domain provides real meaning and depth to those interested in the future of e-marketplaces. In particular, the factors identified provide those that operate such e-marketplaces with a detailed and actionable understanding of the issues they should address in order to survive, and provide users or potential users of consortium marketplaces with a practical framework with which to assess individual marketplaces. The factors can also form the basis of future studies of other types of marketplaces and of quantitative studies of adoption.     

Routinisation of B2B E-commerce by small firms: A process perspective

Prior research on e-business based on the TOE framework and the factor based variance approach have yielded mixed results in that differences exist in terms of the identified technology, organisation and environmental factors and their influence at different steps of the routinisation trajectory. In this research we probe deeper into the routinisation phenomenon and investigate the process in a bid to understand ??when?? and ??why?? certain TOE factors become crucial determinants at different stages of the routinisation process. The context of our study is integration of B2B e-markets by four small firms. Our findings from interpretive case studies indicate that changes in organisational characteristic (such as IT infrastructure), environmental characteristics (such as e-business usage in the industry), and perceptions of e-business (risk and benefit) over time influenced movement along the routinisation trajectory. There is evidence that in high risk e-business, the ability to conduct trials with controlled risk is a crucial determinant of progression from initial to continued usage. Also, contrary to the independent effects of the organisation, environment and technology characteristics assumed in prior research, we found that it is the interaction effect of the three factors that determined initial attitude, initial usage and continued usage. Based on our findings we develop a process model of e-business routinisation and discuss the theoretical and practical implications.     

A study of B2B e-market in China: E-commerce process perspective

In China, B2B electronic markets are still in their early stages of development. The lack of basic business infrastructures has delayed the development of e-markets. The intervention and support of government and IT firms was needed to provide technical support and services to e-markets. We developed a conceptual model to aid in evaluating value creation strategy in B2B e-market; it can also be used to determine the complexity of such activities in Chinese B2B e-markets. Based on a case study of two Chinese e-markets, a process-oriented approach was found to be more suitable in modeling the value creation and therefore was selected. The model addressed two major factors: the transaction process and controlling complexity. The crucial value creation activities and strategies in the four phases of the transaction process are identified, and the controlling complexity of these activities is evaluated in the model. Our results offer an approach for studying the dynamic structure of e-commerce processes while focusing on the special issues of e-market development in China.     

B2B e-commerce supply chain integration and performance: A contingency fit perspective on the role of environment

Drawing upon contingency theory “fit” research in the IT and supply chain management literature, we applied the “fit” concept to the relationship between B2B e-commerce supply chain integration and performance. The results demonstrated that the effect of B2B supply chain integration on financial, market, and operational performance decreased as product turbulence and demand unpredictability jointly increased. Managerial implications include the conditions under which IT investments yield performance improvement and the need for firms to actively manage demand uncertainty.     

Evaluating the trustworthiness of advice about seller agents in e-marketplaces: A personalized approach

In this paper, we present a model for evaluating the trustworthiness of advice about seller agents in electronic marketplaces. In particular, we propose a novel personalized approach for effectively handling unfair ratings of sellers provided to buyer agents from other buyers (called advisors). Our approach offers flexibility for buyers to weight their value for private and public knowledge about advisors. A personalized approach is proposed as well for buyers to model the trustworthiness of sellers, based on the advice provided. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach can effectively model trustworthiness for both advisors and sellers, even when there are large numbers of unfair ratings.     

Warning research: an integrative perspective

We developed an integrative perspective on the empirical evidence supporting the influence of particular variables on the warning process based on a broad review of the warning literature. The warning process is described in terms of the following four components: notice, encode, comprehend, and comply. Relevant variables are classified as person variables (characteristics of the individual interacting with the warning) and warning variables (characteristics of the warning itself or the context in which the warning appears). This integrative perspective yields general principles about the variables that influence the warning process and serves as a resource for warning developers and as a guide to facilitate effective analysis of warnings. We also identify aspects of the warning process that are not well understood, directions for effective methods of intervention, and a research agenda for future efforts. Actual or potential applications of this research include improving the design of warnings.     

Information transfer in B2B procurement: an empirical analysis and measurement

Inter-organizational relationships employing IT may be the most important technological breakthrough in B2B partnerships, since it is likely to alter the competitive landscape of industries radically. Electronic integration (EI) may be defined as the integration of business processes of two or more independent organizations through the exploitation of the capabilities of computer and communication technologies. Prior research has primarily used the adoption of electronic data interchange (EDI) as a surrogate measure for EI. While researchers have called for the assessment of the degree of EI instead of presence/absence of EDI between two firms, a measure was still to be developed. Conceptualizing EI as a multi-dimensional construct, our research focused on developing a measure for a crucial component: electronic information transfer (EIT). Four dimensions of it (decision and operation integration (DOI), mutual investment in relationship-specific assets (MIRSA), information sharing (IS), and monitoring and control (MAC)) were analyzed and an instrument for EIT measurement was developed. Data collected from two major corporations in the U.S. were used to verify the instrument's ability to measure EIT effectively.     

Understanding overbidding behavior in C2C auctions: an escalation theory perspective

With millions of online auctions per day, sites such as eBay have revolutionized how consumers buy and sell goods. Despite the benefits associated with online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions, there can be drawbacks. Consumers who purchase goods in online auctions may get caught up in auction fever, causing them to engage in overbidding, and sometimes leading to what has been referred to as the winner's curse. While several theoretical explanations have been proposed to explain overbidding behavior (OB), there has been little empirical work in this area. Drawing on escalation theory, this study develops and tests a model of the OB exhibited by individuals in online auction settings. Our model posits that certain escalation drivers such as sunk cost (SC), the completion effect (CE), and self-justification affect an individual's willingness to continue bidding (WCB) which, in turn, influences OB. Survey data collected from 250 online auction participants were used to test the model using partial least squares analysis. SC and CE were found to have significant impacts on OB that were either partially or fully mediated by WCB. We also found that competition intensity moderates the relationship between willingness to continue and OB such that when competition is more intense, the relationship becomes even stronger. The implications of these findings for both research and practice are discussed.     

Adaptive sorting: an information theoretic perspective

We present two algorithms that are near optimal with respect to the number of inversions present in the input. One of the algorithms is a variation of insertion sort, and the other is a variation of merge sort. The number of comparisons performed by our algorithms, on an input sequence of length n that has I inversions, is at most . Moreover, both algorithms have implementations that run in time . All previously published algorithms require at least comparisons for some c > 1. M. L. Fredman was supported in part by NSF grant CCR-9732689.     

IT-enabled change: evaluating an improvisational perspective

This paper presents an empirical study into a hierarchical organization's experience with the adoption and use of an adaptive information technology, in this case a workflow application. The paper takes an improvisational perspective on the change process and assesses it through a case study which examines the organization's experiences in terms of anticipated, opportunity-based and emergent changes to their processes, structure and culture that were enabled by the introduction of the workflow application. The findings build upon Orlikowski and Hofman's improvisational change model by evaluating the model in a different organizational context to that of the original study. The findings reveal that ongoing improvisational changes can occur in hierarchical organizations and that improvisations and adaptations can occur in organizations which adopt adaptive IT provided that ongoing support for change management is forthcoming. The findings also suggest that there is a correlation between the level of customer dissatisfaction and the emergence of any local improvisations regardless of the organization type. This implies that an improvisational perspective may be useful for hierarchical organizations which introduce new technology as the local improvisations which can occur may be leveraged for advantage. The study also raises important questions about the categorisation of technologies as adaptive and critically reflects on this aspect of the improvisational change model.     

Repurchase intention in B2C e-commerce—A relationship quality perspective

Information systems professionals must pay attention to online customer retention. Drawing on the relationship marketing literature, we formulated and tested a model to explain B2C user repurchase intention from the perspective of relationship quality. The model was empirically tested through a survey conducted in Northern Ireland. Results showed that online relationship quality and perceived website usability positively impacted customer repurchase intention. Moreover, online relationship quality was positively influenced by perceived vendor expertise in order fulfillment, perceived vendor reputation, and perceived website usability, whereas distrust in vendor behavior negatively influenced online relationship quality. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Determinants of ASP choice: an integrated perspective

With the rise in the availability of scalable network technologies and resources, Application Service Providers (ASPs) have become increasingly more feasible sources for obtaining IS services. ASP research represents an opportunity to integrate previous research on outsourcing, applied in the area of ASP choice. Historically, outsourcing research has adopted many theoretical perspectives, including transaction cost, resource-based, resource-dependence, and knowledge-based. We apply these perspectives in the ASP context. When obtaining IS services through an ASP, factors other than cost and those explained by the resource-based and resource-dependent perspectives can become paramount. The knowledge-based perspective enables us to examine knowledge risk and integration requirements. Drawing upon past research and an exploratory study conducted with 35 respondents in 11 firms, an integrated, theoretical model is proposed, which combines the transaction cost, resource-based, resource dependency and knowledge-based perspectives. The model is used to explain the antecedent conditions useful for making decisions on IT sourcing through ASPs.     

Determinants of business sustainability: an ergonomics perspective

There is a need to integrate both macro- and micro-ergonomic approaches for the effective implementation of interventions designed to improve the root causes of problems such as work safety, quality and productivity in the enterprise system. The objective of this study was to explore from an ergonomics perspective the concept of business sustainability through optimising the worker-work environment interface. The specific aims were: (a) to assess the working conditions of a production department work process with the goal to jointly optimise work safety, quality and quantity; (b) to evaluate the enterprise-wide work process at the system level as a social entity in an attempt to trace the root causes of ergonomic issues impacting employees throughout the work process. The Work Compatibility Model was deployed to examine the experiences of workers (that is, effort, perceived risk/benefit, performance and satisfaction/dissatisfaction or psychological impact) and their associations with the complex domains of the work environment (task content, physical and non-physical work environment and conditions for learning/growth/development). This was followed by assessment of the enterprise system through detailed interviews with department managers and lead workers. A system diagnostic instrument was also constructed from information derived from the published literature to evaluate the enterprise system performance. The investigation of the production department indicated that the stress and musculoskeletal pain experienced by workers (particularly on the day shift) were derived from sources elsewhere in the work process. The enterprise system evaluation and detailed interviews allowed the research team to chart the feed-forward and feedback stress propagation loops in the work system. System improvement strategies were extracted on the basis of tacit/explicit knowledge obtained from department managers and lead workers. In certain situations concerning workplace human performance issues, a combined macro-micro ergonomic methodology is essential to solve the productivity, quality and safety issues impacting employees along the trajectory or path of the enterprise-wide work process. In this study, the symptoms associated with human performance issues in one production department work process had root causes originating in the customer service department work process. In fact, the issues found in the customer service department caused performance problems elsewhere in the enterprise-wide work process such as the traffic department. Sustainable enterprise solutions for workplace human performance require the integration of macro- and micro-ergonomic approaches.     

Concave type-2 fuzzy sets: properties and operations

In this article, concave type-2 fuzzy sets are investigated. The calculation of union and intersection of concave type-2 fuzzy sets using the min t-norm and the max t-conorm are explored and it is proved that the set of concave type-2 fuzzy sets is closed under those operations. It is also shown that the set of LR-normal concave type-2 fuzzy sets forms a commutative semiring under join and meet.     

Investigating the implementation of restricted sets of multiqubit operations on distant qubits: a communication complexity perspective

We propose a protocol for Alice to implement a multiqubit quantum operation from the restricted sets on distant qubits possessed by Bob, and then we investigate the communication complexity of the task in different communication scenarios. By comparing with the previous work, our protocol works without prior sharing of entanglement, and requires less communication resources than the previous protocol in the qubit-transmission scenario. Furthermore, we generalize our protocol to d-dimensional operations.     

Context-aware multimedia services modeling: an e-Health perspective

In this paper we present an e-Health framework model that can dynamically provide context-aware multimedia services to a user. The framework collects live user context by analyzing sensory data obtained from a body sensor network and multimedia content available from live heterogeneous Internet-based services. Finally, we share the implementation details and test results.     

Distributed multimedia information systems: an end-to-end perspective

Emerging Web-based applications require distributed multimedia information system (DMIS) infrastructures. Examples of such applications abound in the domains of medicine, entertainment, manufacturing, e-commerce, as well as military and critical national infrastructures. Development of DMIS for such applications need a broad range of technological solutions for organizing, storing, and delivering multimedia information in an integrated, secure and timely manner with guaranteed end-to-end (E2E) quality of presentation (QoP). DMIS are viewed as catalysts for new research in many areas, ranging from basic research to applied technology. This view is a result of the fact that no single monolithic end-to-end architecture for DMIS can meet the wide spectrum of characteristics and requirements of various Web-based multimedia applications. One size does not fit all in this medium of communication. Management of integrated end-to-end QoP and ensuring information security in DMIS, when viewed in conjunction with real world constraints and system-wide performance requirements, present formidable research and implementation challenges. These challenges encompass all the sub-system components of a DMIS. The ultimate objective of achieving a comprehensive end-to-end QoP management relies on the performance and allocation of resources of each of the DMIS sub-system components including networks, databases, and end-systems. In this paper, we elaborate on these challenges and present a high level distributed architecture aimed at providing the critical functionality for a DMIS.

Online dispute resolution: an artificial intelligence perspective

Litigation in court is still the main dispute resolution mode. However, given the amount and characteristics of the new disputes, mostly arising out of electronic contracting, courts are becoming slower and outdated. Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) recently emerged as a set of tools and techniques, supported by technology, aimed at facilitating conflict resolution. In this paper we present a critical evaluation on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based techniques in ODR. In order to fulfill this goal, we analyze a set of commercial providers (in this case twenty four) and some research projects (in this circumstance six). Supported by the results so far achieved, a new approach to deal with the problem of ODR is proposed, in which we take on some of the problems identified in the current state of the art in linking ODR and AI.     

The neural representation of time: an information-theoretic perspective

A prominent finding in psychophysical experiments on time perception is Weber's law, the linear scaling of timing errors with duration. The ability to reproduce this scaling has been taken as a criterion for the validity of neurocomputational models of time perception. However, the origin of Weber's law remains unknown, and currently only a few models generically reproduce it. Here, we use an information-theoretical framework that considers the neuronal mechanisms of time perception as stochastic processes to investigate the statistical origin of Weber's law in time perception and also its frequently observed deviations. Under the assumption that the brain is able to compute optimal estimates of time, we find that Weber's law only holds exactly if the estimate is based on temporal changes in the variance of the process. In contrast, the timing errors scale sublinearly with time if the systematic changes in the mean of a process are used for estimation, as is the case in the majority of time perception models, while estimates based on temporal correlations result in a superlinear scaling. This hierarchy of temporal information is preserved if several sources of temporal information are available. Furthermore, we consider the case of multiple stochastic processes and study the examples of a covariance-based model and a model based on synfire chains. This approach reveals that existing neurocomputational models of time perception can be classified as mean-, variance- and correlation-based processes and allows predictions about the scaling of the resulting timing errors.     

Analysis of assembly operations difficulty: a fuzzy expert system approach

Typical mechanical products can be assembled in various sequences of assembly operations. These sequences have high impact on the assembly time, machine utilization and even on the product quality. In order to select the best sequence of assembly operations, proper evaluation of the various sequences of assembly operations is required. This, in turn, requires the consistent evaluation of each assembly operation in the sequence. The assembly operations can be evaluated for various criteria, of which the operation difficulty is the most meaningful. This paper describes a methodology to analyse the assembly operations and calculates an operation's degree of difficulty using an expert system. This analysis consists of two steps: the first one identifies the main parameters that affect the assembly difficulty and assigns fuzzy triangular values to these parameters. The second step assigns weights to the parameters in order to maximize the agreement with a domain expert. The expert system analyses the difficulty of the assembly operation performed in two orientations: horizontal and vertical. The expert system then assigns a triangular fuzzy number as the aggregate measure of the operation's difficulty.