Information accessibility reconsidered

What makes information accessible in an organization? Although the conventional wisdom is that information accessibility is of primary importance in explaining information acquisition and use, the determinants and components of such accessibility are not, as yet, well understood. The present paper explores this question and attempts to break through our conventional conceptions. Information accessibility is appraised not only in terms of its obvious virtues, but in terms of its oft-hidden costs. Such costs are typically borne by the provider of information, whose interest in the exchange is likely to be one of organizational influence. Reflecting the need to influence, information will be accessible in an organization in large part because of information-push, not simply in response to information-pull. New digital computer and communications technologies tend to intensify the process, raising the information waters in the organization. Coping with the new information surfeit places a premium on organizational intelligence and good sense making.     

Information technology,information systems and information management: definition and development

The growth and development of the information and communication technologies has led to a parallel profusion of different terminologies and literature. It is becoming increasingly difficult for managers and academics to find their way through the confusion and develop a common understanding of terminology. In an attempt at clarification, this paper looks at the main terms and definitions from a management perspective. Their overall use is assessed by an analysis of their usage in general management literature. It is clearly shown that although there are major overlaps and confusions, the term ‘information systems’ is the one in most widespread use. Finally we suggest a framework which may be helpful to those working in this field of research.     

User-centered design and adaptive systems: toward improving usability and accessibility

Universal Access in the Information Society -     

Information systems theory

The overview presented covers a wide spectrum of aspects on information systems. Consequently, we had to be very brief and for detailed definitions and discussions we must refer the interested reader to the underlying literature. We have described how information systems present complex problems to their designers and we argued that it is hardly possible for any one individual to acquire (and continuously update) sufficient skill over the whole spectrum of problems. It is shown how the partitioning of the design task into two major areas, the infological or behavioral area on the one hand and the datalogical and computer technology oriented area on the other hand, makes it possible to combine the skills of two (or more) groups of people. In addition, the users are to be directly involved in the (infological part of) design. Development in the “infological area”, as surveyed in the paper, has brought us to the situation where it is possible to apply a documentation technique that is computer independent and intelligible to the lay users in its infological parts and yet is precise enough to the data and program design stage. Actual research problems in the infological area are associated with how one could develop the understanding and the motivation of the users so that they can better exploit the possibility to control the design process that is now offered to them. Such research is not covered by the paper. Development in the “datalogical area”, as presented has increased the possibilities for using computers as aid to the designers and to base the design on more system-wide information. A research field which is presently of high interest, but not presented in the paper, is the development of more formalized methods for handling the interface between the infological and the datalogical design stages. Such research is presently making promising progress in combining recent results from “structured programming” and ”structured information analysis”.     

A survey of technology accessibility problems faced by older users in China

Internet accessibility for older users has become an important issue to promote inclusion and participation in the Information Society. This paper proposes an investigation into the technology accessibility problems faced by older users in China. The research reported here was conducted by means of an exploratory survey with a Web-based questionnaire and discussions with older users at meetings. The study had 180 valid answers and involved representatives from each of the 25 provinces of China. The results show that 39% of the participants cannot or can only partially access information, because of various kinds of accessibility problems. Many participants indicated that the main problems in accessing the Internet were health barriers, circumstances barriers, and Internet design barrier. The possible reason for these difficulties could be that the government doesn’t foster a social environment conducive to helping the elderly to get online and that it does not provide services for the elderly designed to help them access information electronically. The poor rate of accessibility industry for the elderly, as well as the lack of Chinese accessibility laws, is an important issue that must be dealt with to promote greater Internet accessibility for the elderly.     

A geometric method for observability and accessibility of discrete impulsive nonlinear systems

This article is concerned with the observability and accessibility of discrete impulsive nonlinear systems. A geometric method based on the differential geometric analysis and Lie group investigation is proposed. The infinitesimal invariance principle in Lie group theory is extended to the case of discrete impulsive nonlinear systems. By characterising the infinitesimal principle in terms of the sequences of codistribution and distribution, explicit criteria for the local observability and local accessibility of the system are derived, respectively. Additionally, two examples are provided to show that the criteria are convenient to check.     

Modeling learning technology systems as business systems

The design of Learning Technology Systems, and the Software Systems that support them, is largely conducted on an intuitive, ad hoc basis, thus resulting in inefficient systems that defectively support the learning process. There is now justifiable, increasing effort in formalizing the engineering of Learning Technology Systems in order to achieve better learning effectiveness as well as development efficiency. This paper presents such an approach for designing Learning Technology Systems and their most popular specialization, the Web-based Learning Systems, by modeling them as business systems, using business-modeling methods. The aim is to provide an in-depth analysis and comprehension of the Learning Technology Systems and Web-based Learning Systems domain, that can be used for improving the systems themselves, as well as for building the supporting software systems. Our work is based upon the Learning Technology Systems Architecture standard of IEEE LTSC, on the empirical results of designing Web-based Learning Systems for university courses and on the practices of the Rational Unified Process and the Unified Modeling Language.     

IT营销新理念

市场的变革　　IT风暴带来了世界性的市场变革大潮,新科技革命的迅猛发展促使企业竞相采用新技术,开发新产品.在这样的形势下,IT企业必须从宏观上把握市场变革的方向,了解它对企业自身、对产品、对顾客的影响,以便从中发掘竞争优势,寻找最佳策略,并先于竞争对手加以实施,从而对市场变革的挑战做出有力的回应.     

Information systems and performance: the role of technology,the task and the individual

Organisations require good performance from individuals to achieve their objectives. In view of the growing presence of technology, it becomes necessary to understand performance in the context of information systems. However, the research streams that study performance (e.g. industrial psychology or the impact of technology on performance) focus primarily on a single component (the individual or the technology). The systemic perspective, for its part, considers all three components (technology, the individual and the task) and their relationships in order to explain performance. From this perspective, this article develops a research model where individual (knowledge of the task and the technology), task (ease) and technology (usefulness and ease) factors determine performance. Links are also established between these factors. Data were collected from 246 individuals and the results show that the proposed links are significant. This research highlights that management should take into account all three components to boost performance. The study emphasises in which factors of these components special care should be taken. The lack of improvement in performance after the introduction of an information system may not be solved merely by tackling the features of the technology but also by simplifying the tasks or reviewing the users’ knowledge gaps.     

The use of group support systems in focus groups: Information technology meets qualitative research

This paper explores focus groups supported by group support systems (GSS) with anonymous interaction capability in two configurations: same time/same place and same time/different place. After reviewing the literature, we compare and contrast these anonymity-featured GSS-supported focus groups with traditional focus groups and discuss their benefits and limitations. We suggest directions for future research concerning GSS-supported focus groups with respect to technological implications (typing skills and connection speeds), national culture (high and low context; power distance), and lying behavior (adaptation of model of Hancock, J. T., Thom-Santelli, J., & Ritchie, T. (2004). Deception and design: The impact of communication technology on lying behavior. Proceedings of the 2004 conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 129–134), whereby lying is a function of three design factors: synchronicity, recordability, and distributedness).