Specification and testing of autonomous agents in e‐commerce systems

This paper presents a generic formal framework to specify and test autonomous e‐commerce agents. First, the formalism to represent the behaviour of agents is introduced. The corresponding machinery to define how implementations can be tested follows. Two testing approaches are considered. The first of them, which can be called active, is based on stimulating the implementation under test (IUT) with a test. The peculiarity is that tests will be defined as a special case of autonomous e‐commerce agent. The second approach, which can be called passive, consists of observing the behaviour of the tested agent in an environment containing other agents. As a case study the framework is applied to the e‐commerce system Kasbah. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Whether a retailer should enter an e‐commerce platform taking into account consumer returns

Considering consumers are increasingly shopping online nowadays and the online sales market is dominated by e‐commerce giants, traditional retailers need to choose whether to enter e‐commerce platforms. Moreover, traditional retailers need to determine whether to offer offline return services considering online return services are very popular. To address these challenges, we explore a retailer's optimal offline return strategy and channel choice of whether or not to enter a platform in the contexts of symmetric information and asymmetric information, respectively. We present conditions for the retailer to share information. Interestingly, we find that the retailer in some conditions has no motivation to improve customer satisfaction rate of offline store. Most important, we find that the retailer's channel choice depends on the magnitude of the annual service fee that is affected by offline return strategy and asymmetric information, and the offline return strategy depends on the magnitude of the average residual value of returned products.     

Poverty alleviation through government‐led e‐commerce development in rural China: An activity theory perspective

This paper uses activity theoretic analyses to investigate the role of governments in developing rural e‐commerce ecosystems and the effects of such ecosystems on poverty alleviation. On the basis of a case study of Longnan, one of the poorest regions in China, this paper reports and analyses the various actions taken by local governments in nurturing, supporting, and regulating the development of a local rural e‐commerce ecosystem and using this ecosystem to transform poverty alleviation. Our study articulates a model of poverty alleviation through e‐commerce. By documenting and theorizing the mechanisms underlying rural e‐commerce development and poverty alleviation through e‐commerce as well as governments' role in developing and sustaining them, this paper contributes to establishing a “theory of the solution” to the grand challenge of poverty alleviation both in China and globally.     

Developing community capability for e‐commerce development in rural China: A resource orchestration perspective

Community capability enables a large number of rural citizens to cooperatively engage in e‐commerce as an e‐commerce cluster, and it thus plays a critical role in e‐commerce development in the rural regions of developing countries. Taking the resource orchestration perspective as the theoretical lens, this study investigates the process for developing community capability. Two cases of community capability development in rural Chinese villages are studied. The findings reveal two settings for community capability development—government supported and self‐orchestrated—and show that community capability is developed through the individual capabilities of lead users and the resource orchestration interactions of stakeholders. This study has theoretical implications because it reveals the importance of developing community capability by orchestrating resources beyond merely providing training and education to rural community members and because it identifies the processes for developing community capability in the two respective settings. It also extends the resource orchestration perspective from a single‐firm context to a community context by revealing the resource orchestration interactions.     

电子商务安全体系的探讨

随着Internet的发展,电子商务已经逐渐成为人们进行商务活动的新模式。建立一个安全便捷的电子商务环境,对信息提供足够的保护十分重要。针对这个问题,介绍了电子商务面临的安全威胁,论证了电子商务体系的控制要求,探讨了电子商务安全体系的法律法规和安全技术问题。     

A distributed and multi‐tiered software architecture for assessing e‐Commerce recommendations

Recently, an ever increasing number of e‐Commerce tools has been made available that are able to help customers by generating purposed recommendations. Many of them are centralized so that they have to face problems related to efficiency and scalability. A few of them are distributed, but in this case, the complexity of the e‐Commerce process implies computation overhead on the client side, which is often unsuitable if mobile devices are used by customers. In this paper, we study how the software distribution in recommender systems affects their performances, depending on the characteristics of the e‐Commerce population. To this end, we present a distributed testbed architecture for e‐Commerce recommender systems using a multi‐tiered agent‐based approach to generate effective recommendations without requiring such an onerous amount of computation per single client. We use such a testbed to study the main advantages and limitations associated with the problem of distributing the computation of recommendations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enterprise architecture,IT effectiveness and the mediating role of IT alignment in US hospitals

Despite the possible benefits of implementing healthcare information technologies, successful implementation of effective healthcare information technology is constrained by cultural and regulatory concerns and technical obstacles encountered when establishing or upgrading an organisation's enterprise infrastructure. In this paper, we advance Ross' four‐stage model of enterprise architecture maturity as a valuable IT resource for helping healthcare organisations sustain a competitive advantage. We use partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling to analyse survey data from 164 US hospitals at different stages of EA maturity. Our results provide evidence that enterprise architecture maturity directly influences the effectiveness of hospitals' IT resources for achieving strategic goals. Further, enterprise architecture maturity indirectly influences the effectiveness of IT resources when IT alignment is incorporated as a mediating variable. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice and suggest opportunities for future research.     

Achieving IT‐based synergies through regulation‐oriented and consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities

This study aims at exploring the IT governance capabilities that enable organizations to achieve IT‐based synergies. Following existing work on the contextualization of theories and drawing on the resource‐based view of the firm (RBV), we develop an RBV of IT‐based synergies in two steps. First, we adopt existing context‐specific constructs and relationships from prior work on IT governance capabilities, IT relatedness, and synergies to develop a preliminary contextualization of the RBV. Second, to further refine our theoretical framework, we conduct an exploratory field study that includes interviews with 26 CIOs and other IT executives from 21 multibusiness firms. Our findings suggest that IT governance capabilities lead to IT‐based synergies through IT relatedness and business process relatedness. We found regulation‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT roles and IT processes) to increase IT relatedness, while consensus‐oriented IT governance capabilities (IT groups and relational capabilities) had a positive effect on business process relatedness. Our results suggest that, in isolation, IT and business process relatedness lead to IT cost synergies, while collectively enabling IT‐induced business synergies. Our study is among the first to treat IT relatedness as an endogenous construct and to explicitly integrate business process relatedness into the IT governance domain. Our context‐specific decomposition of IT governance capabilities helps to better explain their links to IT and business process relatedness. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the tension between IT‐based synergies and business‐IT alignment. Decision‐makers are guided in developing IT governance capabilities to achieve IT‐based synergies.     

The role of e‐learning coaches in Australian secondary schools

The purpose of this study was to explore the personal experiences of e‐learning coaches working in secondary schools in order to provide information about the role of an e‐learning coach. Seven secondary schools in the outer‐eastern region of Melbourne, Australia, were involved in a 3‐year e‐learning project. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted by an independent researcher with an e‐learning coach from each of the seven schools involved in the research. A number of themes emerged from the interviews, including role confusion, changes in the role over time, the importance of establishing relationships, barriers to the uptake of information and communication technology (ICT) and ICT usage. To facilitate the integration of ICT with teaching practices in the secondary school setting, we recommend that a full‐time position for an on‐site e‐learning coach receiving the total support of school leaders is needed to provide relevant professional development and ongoing support to classroom teachers.     

A highly modular and extensible architecture for an integrated IMS‐based authoring system: the <e‐Aula> experience

The <e‐Aula> platform is a new experimental e‐learning environment that adheres closely to IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. e‐learning standards in order to facilitate their applicability in different learning scenarios. <e‐Aula> is equipped with an integrated modular and extensible architecture for the authoring of IMS‐compliant learning materials focused on the IMS manifest. This manifest‐driven architecture facilitates maintenance and promotes the evolution of the authoring system in <e‐Aula>, both of which are mandatory requirements in the successful production and maintenance of content for many different specialized learning domains. In this paper, we describe this authoring system, its manifest‐driven architecture and its implementation using well‐known and robust Java‐based Web technologies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The contingent effect of personal IT innovativeness and IT self-efficacy on innovative use of complex IT

While organisational investment in complex information technologies (IT) keeps growing, these technologies are often applied at a superficial level and fail to attain the promised benefits. To further extract the value potential of complex IT, this study investigates employee users' innovate with IT (IwIT), which is a post-acceptance behaviour that refers to individual users applying IT in novel ways to support their task performance. Drawing on the information system continuance (ISC) model, we propose a research framework with perceived usefulness (PU) and satisfaction (SAT) as the antecedents of IwIT. We further emphasise the contingent role of personal characteristics and include personal innovativeness with IT (PIIT) and IT self-efficacy (ITSE) as the moderators of the framework. We validate the model with data from users of two complex ITs: enterprise resource planning and business intelligence technologies. The results suggest that positioning personal factors as moderators significantly increases the explanatory power of the ISC model and offers a more comprehensive understanding about IwIT. Specifically, ITSE positively moderates the effect of PU and negatively moderates the effect of SAT on IwIT. The moderating role of PIIT, however, is subject to the specific type of IT of investigation.     

A study of e‐mail patterns

Although electronic mail is an increasingly important service, there are few empirical studies of e‐mail traffic. We have observed over 2.85 million messages passing through our departmental servers over the course of seven months, and derived distributions that approximate several important e‐mail parameters including message sizes, message senders and receivers and the burstiness of message deliveries. Our work is unique in that we also analyse message payloads: attachment content types, e‐mail redundancy, and the use of e‐mail as a sharing mechanism. These data can be used in developing e‐mail workloads for mail system engineering or benchmarking. To this end, we provide an improved version of Postmark, a small‐file Internet benchmark, that better approximates mail server characteristics. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving the quality of e‐learning: lessons from the eMM

The quality of e‐learning can be defined in many different ways, reflecting different stakeholders and the complexity of the systems and processes used in higher education. These different conceptions of quality can be mutually contradictory and, while politically significant, may also be beyond the direct control or influence of institutional leaders. The e‐learning maturity model (eMM) provides a framework for e‐learning quality improvement that measures the capability of institutions to sustainably engage in e‐learning and visualizes that capability in a way that assists leaders and managers using that information to undertake systematic and targeted improvements in their institution's e‐learning activities. This paper synthesizes the outcomes of multiple international eMM assessments to extract a set of starting points for institutions intending to improve the quality of e‐learning experienced by their students.     

Assessing e‐commerce systems success: a respecification and validation of the DeLone and McLean model of IS success

Abstract. DeLone & McLean (2003) propose an updated information systems (IS) success model and suggest that it can be extended to investigating e‐commerce systems success. However, the updated IS success model has not been empirically validated in the context of e‐commerce. Further, the existing IS/e‐commerce success models have been subject to considerable debate on the ‘IS Use’ and ‘Perceived Usefulness’ constructs, and the nomological structure of the updated DeLone and McLean model is somewhat inconsistent with the IS acceptance and marketing literature. Based on the IS and marketing literature, this paper respecifies and validates a multidimensional model for assessing e‐commerce systems success. The validated model consists of six dimensions: Information Quality, System Quality, Service Quality, Perceived Value, User Satisfaction and Intention to Reuse. Structural equation modelling techniques were applied to data collected by questionnaire from 240 users of e‐commerce systems in Taiwan. The empirical evidence suggests that Intention to Reuse is affected by Perceived Value and User Satisfaction, which, in turn, are influenced by Information Quality, System Quality and Service Quality. The nomological structure of the respecified e‐commerce systems success model is concurred with that of the technology acceptance model (TAM) in the IS field and the consumer behaviour models in the traditional business‐to‐business and retail contexts. The findings of this study provide several important implications for research and practice. This paper concludes by discussing the contributions of this study and the limitations that could be addressed in future studies.     

Antecedents and consequences of e‐learning acceptance

Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study uses the framework of the extended TAM to examine the antecedents and consequences for employees' acceptance of the e‐learning system within financial services organizations. The total of 328 useable responses collected from eight international or domestic financial services companies in Taiwan were tested against the model using structural equation modelling (SEM). The main research results are summarized as follows in terms of the antecedents of e‐learning acceptance and its impact on employees' perceived performance. Four types of determinants are demonstrated: individual factors, system factors, social factors and network externality factor. Finally, this study proposes relevant suggestions for practitioners and future researchers.     

Collaborative recommendation of e‐learning resources: an experimental investigation

Repositories with educational resources can support the formation of online learning communities by providing a platform for collaboration. Users (e.g. teachers, tutors and learners) access repositories, search for interesting resources to access and use, and in many cases, also exchange experiences and opinions. A particular class of online services that take advantage of the collected knowledge and experience of users are collaborative filtering ones. The successful operation of such services in the context of real‐life applications requires careful testing and parameterization before their actual deployment. In this paper, the case of developing a learning resources' collaborative filtering service for an online community of teachers in Europe was examined. More specifically, a data set of evaluations of learning resources was collected from the teachers that use the European Schoolnet's learning resource portal. These evaluations were then used to support the experimental investigation of design choices for an online collaborative filtering service for the portal's learning resources. A candidate multi‐attribute utility collaborative filtering algorithm was appropriately parameterized and tested for this purpose. Results indicated that the development of such systems should be taking place considering the particularities of the actual communities that are to be served.     

To sell or not to sell: Exploring sellers' trust and risk of chargeback fraud in cross‐border electronic commerce

Over the past few decades, chargeback fraud from buyers has been identified as a major risk faced by online sellers, particularly small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises, in cross‐border electronic commerce. However, most previous studies have focused on trust and perceived risk from the buyers' perspective and in domestic online marketplaces, while neglecting the importance of sellers' trust and perceived risk in the success of online transactions and the significance of cross‐border transactions. To fill this gap in the literature, this study examines both the antecedents and the impacts of sellers' trust in buyers and their perceived risk of chargeback fraud on sellers' intention to trade with buyers in the context of cross‐border e‐commerce. To this end, we develop a conceptual model that identifies a set of institutional mechanisms to enhance sellers' trust and reduce their perceived risk. Hypotheses are tested via a survey of 443 sellers on DHgate.com , one of the major cross‐border e‐commerce websites connecting the small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises of mainland China with overseas buyers. Our research makes concrete contributions to e‐commerce research and generates useful insights for third‐party online transaction platforms and online trade policy makers.     

The effects of keyword cues and 3R strategy on children's e‐book reading

Various studies have found that electronic books (e‐books) promote learning, but few works have examined the use of e‐books along with an adaptive reading strategy for children. The current study implemented a method to extract keyword cues from e‐books to support e‐book reading with the read, recite and review (3R) strategy, and then examined the impact of this on children's reading performance. A pilot work recruited 76 first‐graders, developed the related reading tests and questionnaires. These were later used in assessing the effects of different interventions on the reading performances and perspectives of 74 first‐graders in the main study. Based on the findings of this work, the 3R strategy can be used as an effective approach to guide children's reading with e‐books. In addition, the use of keyword cues incorporated with retrieval practice can provide support with regard to Chinese characters and phonetic information in order to aid children's memorization of the story, thus promoting both phonological awareness and reading comprehension.     

Comparison of national e‐health implementation in the United States and South Korea

With the development of the health care industry, there has been growing recognition that e‐health implementation is needed to improve the efficiency, quality, and safety of care. In addition, a review of previous studies suggests that much can be learned by investigating the difference in national e‐health implementation in the United States and in South Korea. To this end, the main objective of this article is to compare the national e‐health implementation in the case of the United States and South Korea. The results show that in the United States a decentralized e‐health implementation is being followed by individual‐level e‐health. South Korea is pursuing ubiquitous health (u‐health) after a hospital information system and electronic health were implemented. The United States still lags behind many other countries in the implementation of e‐health, possibly due to its low uncertainty avoidance culture. South Korea has been among the frontrunner groups in e‐health implementation as a consequence of its highly developed telecommunication infrastructures and high uncertainty avoidance culture. On the basis of these results, we recommend that establishing health care policies be done on a national scale that takes into account the countries’ cultures.     

Enhancing formal e‐learning with edutainment on social networks

This paper reports on the investigation of the possibilities of enhancing the formal e‐learning process by harnessing the potential of informal game‐based learning on social networks. The goal of the research is to improve the outcomes of the formal learning process through the design and implementation of an educational game on a social network and its integration with a learning management system (LMS) of an educational institution. As a proof of concept, a Facebook educational game that enables students to learn and test their knowledge was developed. Furthermore, the game was integrated with the Moodle LMS and the evaluation was performed within the e‐learning system at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. The results show that the application of social network edutainment in an e‐learning ecosystem has a positive impact on both the students' results and their satisfaction with the learning process as a whole.