An examination of web disclosure and organizational transparency

Web disclosure is a significant technological innovation aimed at improving organizational transparency. Organizations that voluntarily disclose high quality financial and performance information on their public websites are viewed as being more open, trustworthy, and accountable by the general public. Despite the positive benefit of enhanced public trust, many organizations have not implemented the recommended web disclosure principles and best practices. Informed by the theoretical underpinnings of organizational ecology theory, this study develops a theoretical model in order to examine the problem of differential implementation of web disclosure in nonprofit settings. Empirical evidence reveals that the majority of nonprofit websites lack high quality financial and performance information which reflects an opaque digital informative strategy. Our results further suggest that organizational inertia – particularly resistance to change in organizational form – may play an important role in the decision to voluntarily adopt and implement innovative web disclosure practices. The findings have implications for research and information systems design.     

The IS Organization of the Future: Impacts of Global Sourcing

ABSTRACT

Global sourcing will continue to have a major impact on IS organizations. Fourteen “new” and traditional skills that IS organizations will need in tomorrow's global sourcing environment are highlighted.     

Has open source software been institutionalized in organizations or not?

ContextAlmost a decade ago, researchers in information systems and analysts of the information technology (IT) industry were predicting a bright future for open source software (OSS). Recent examples appear to lend support to this, but there exist many detractors of OSS and resistance to the transformation it creates. Thus, it is relevant to take a closer look at the institutionalization of OSS.ObjectiveThis paper evaluates the extent of OSS institutionalization in organizations. A practice or innovation is said to be institutionalized when it is taken-for-granted and its use becomes the norm.MethodDrawing on institutional theory, the underlying concept of organizing vision and the rhetorical theory of diffusion of innovations, we analyze OSS institutionalization through the observation of the evolution of the public discourse about OSS and, simultaneously, the observation of the rate of adoption or diffusion of OSS in organizations.ResultsOSS has become institutionalized for many back-end applications and is gradually becoming institutionalized for some front-end applications, mainly in small and medium enterprises but also in organizations in the financial, publishing, education, government and public sectors. Using the rhetorical theory of diffusion of innovations in tandem with the concept of organizing vision, we provide a deep understanding of the institutionalization of OSS by showing that it has not only diffused among organizations, but is also taken-for-granted in thought and social action. The positive tone and prominence of the public discourse on OSS have an important role to play in its institutionalization.ConclusionThe institutionalization of OSS in organizations cannot be underestimated by IT and business executives as well as key players in the IT industry. Future research efforts should be pursued and directed toward the institutionalization of particular OSS applications in a variety of industries and geographic regions.     

How Does Sentiment Content of Product Reviews Make Diffusion Different?

ABSTRACT

The current study is focusing on diffusion and adoption of new digital artifacts. The goal is to explore the social role of user-generated content (UGC) during the diffusion process of digital products in the context of online social networks. Data collection is conducted on 154 new digital products during a two-year timeframe. Results of the study provide a deeper insight into the influence of sentiment content on new product diffusion and how such a web system (i.e., online social networks) can help to enable a process of value co-creation. The overall finding shows that sentiment content has a positive, but dynamic relationship with diffusion of digital products.

The study sheds light on the crowding power and the long-tail effect in online social networks. Findings also offer valuable implications for organizations to set up their strategic vision in terms of information dissemination, digital marketing, and customer relationship management.     

E-government adoption in public administration organizations: integrating institutional theory perspective and resource-based view

We develop and test a theoretical model to investigate the adoption of government-to-government (G2G) information systems in public administration organizations. Specifically, this model explains how top management commitment (TMC) mediates the impact of external institutional pressures on internal organizational resource allocation, which finally leads to the adoption decision. The hypotheses were tested using survey data from public administration organizations in China. Results from partial least squares analyses suggest that coercive and normative pressures positively affect TMC, which then positively affects financial and information technology (IT) human resources in the G2G adoption process. In turn, financial and IT human resources are confirmed to positively affect the intention to adopt G2G. Surprisingly, we do not find support for our hypothesis that mimetic pressures directly influence TMC. Rather, a post hoc analysis implies that mimetic pressures indirectly influence TMC via the influence of coercive pressures. Our findings provide important managerial implications for public administration organizations.     

Senior managers’ perception on green information systems (IS) adoption and environmental performance: Results from a field survey

Based on a Belief-Action-Outcome framework, we produced a model that shows senior managers’ perception of both the antecedents to and the consequences of Green IS adoption by a firm. This conceptual model and its associated hypotheses were empirically tested using a dataset generated from a survey of 405 organizations. The results suggest that coercive pressure influences the attitude toward Green IS adoption while mimetic pressure does not. In addition, we found that there was a significant relationship between Green IS adoption, attitude, and consideration of future consequences. Finally, we found that only long term Green IS adoption was positively related to environmental performance.     

Effect of blockchain-based donation system on trustworthiness of NPOs

Donation-phobia has been spreading across several Korean nonprofit organizations (NPOs) because of donation-related scandals. This study analyzes whether blockchain-based donation system (BDS) can resolve this problem by enhancing NPOs’ trustworthiness. This study examined the effects of the following three features of BDS: transparency, immutability, and efficiency, along with their subsequent effects on formation of NPOs’ trustworthiness. Accordingly, information on NPOs’ activities was offered using a BDS with a two-group post-test-only design. The results demonstrated that information provided on the BDS site enhanced the three features of the BDS, which improved the trustworthiness of the NPO.     

Demystifying Disclosure Controls: Understanding Them to Effectively Leverage Toward Objectives

Abstract

All organizations are subject to some degree of disclosure requirements, which are also commonly called external reporting requirements. They can be as simple as filing tax returns or as complex as meeting applicable rules and regulations of a governmental regulator, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). No matter the extent, organizations are well advised to have robust disclosure controls in place to help ensure that external disclosures are prepared and delivered in accordance with the applicable external reporting requirements. While the article tackles disclosure controls mostly from SEC's definition, it also has ideas for entities not subject to SEC rules and regulations since this is a topic that applies to all types of organizations. It is essential to complete disclosures in an accurate, timely and complete manner to protect against adverse legal actions and to preserve the organization's reputation. The interests of stakeholder groups such as governments, creditors and regulators are essential to the success of any business and ignoring or under-resourcing their requirements is a recipe for disaster that can be averted through appropriate disclosure controls.     

A survey and classification of XML based attacks on web applications

ABSTRACT

XML based attacks are executed in web applications through crafted XML document that forces XML parser to process un-validated documents. This leads to disclosure of sensitive information, malicious code execution and disruption of services. OWASP has included XML based attacks at number four in its top 10 list of vulnerabilities published in 2017. Most of the vulnerabilities reported using the XML document range from high to critical and require to be addressed immediately. As per the National Vulnerability Database, 152 vulnerabilities have already been reported in the first five months of the year 2019. A varied number of XML vulnerabilities and their classification exist but are limited to a specific vulnerability. In this paper, the authors have proposed a classification of XML based vulnerabilities based on exhaustive literature survey. The approach/strategies to mitigate these vulnerabilities are also presented. The work will help the web developers for proposing secure parsers that will thwart such attacks.     

Information,Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media*

The rapid diffusion of “microblogging” services such as Twitter is ushering in a new era of possibilities for organizations to communicate with and engage their core stakeholders and the general public. To enhance understanding of the communicative functions microblogging serves for organizations, this study examines the Twitter utilization practices of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. The analysis reveals there are three key functions of microblogging updates—“information,”“community,” and “action.” Though the informational use of microblogging is extensive, nonprofit organizations are better at using Twitter to strategically engage their stakeholders via dialogic and community‐building practices than they have been with traditional websites. The adoption of social media appears to have engendered new paradigms of public engagement.     

Security and Control in the Cloud

ABSTRACT

Cloud computing is a new IT delivery paradigm that offers computing resources as on-demand services over the Internet. Like all forms of outsourcing, cloud computing raises serious concerns about the security of the data assets that are outsourced to providers of cloud services. To address these security concerns, we show how today's generation of information security management systems (ISMSs), as specified in the ISO/IEC 27001:2005, must be extended to address the transfer of security controls into cloud environments. The resulting virtual ISMS is a standards-compliant management approach for developing a sound control environment while supporting the various modalities of cloud computing.

This article addresses chief security and/or information officers of cloud client and cloud provider organizations. Cloud clients will benefit from our exposition of how to manage risk when corporate assets are outsourced to cloud providers. Providers of cloud services will learn what processes and controls they can offer in order to provide superior security that differentiates their offerings in the market.     

VsLattice: A vector-based conceptual index structure for web service retrieval

With the rising adoption of web services, effective management of web services becomes a critical issue in making the paradigm of service-oriented computing more practical. In this paper, a novel structure, called Vector-based service Lattice ( VsLattice), is devised to index web services in a semantic way. Each web service is modeled as a group of Service Operation Vectors (SOVs) in the vector space, and each SOV represents an operation provided by the service. The web services, SOVs and the relationship between web services and SOVs form the Conceptual Indexing Context (CIC) of a given service collection. In the CIC, web services that provide similar operations (functions) are conceptually indexed by the same Operation Vector Concepts (OVCs). The underlying relationships among the OVCs are captured with the VsLattice, which is constructed by adopting the traditional concept lattice in a CIC. By taking advantage of the information obtained from the VsLattice, a new representation of SOV is devised. Based on this representation, a novel service retrieval model and the implemental system are developed to retrieve web services efficiently. The performance and retrieving quality of the proposed approach has been evaluated through a series of experiments.

The role of context in IT assimilation: A multi-method study of a SaaS platform in the US nonprofit sector

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) operate in environments characterized by growing competition for resources and greater stakeholder demands for accountability, which makes deploying and maintaining information systems a struggle. In this competitive, resource-constrained environment, enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms offer NPOs a cost-effective way access reliable, low-maintenance information technology services. Thus, the extent to which NPOs assimilate SaaS is an important area of inquiry. Yet despite the wealth of research on organizational IT assimilation, we know little regarding whether, when, and how NPOs assimilate IT innovations. We further our understanding of NPO assimilation of SaaS by conducting a context-based study. To do so, we employ multiple methods with data collected from US-based NPOs executives. Our first study showed that organizational factors (e.g., readiness, top management participation) and environmental factors (e.g., social gains, industry) affect the degree to which NPOs assimilate SaaS. However, we also found that technological factors do not appear to play a significant role in NPO SaaS assimilation. We conducted a phenomenological analysis to shed further light on this unexpected finding. Our analysis found that readiness to adopt SaaS, perceptions about SaaS complexity, and the use of outside consultants all played a key role in NPOs’ assimilation process.     

The Contribution of ICT Adoption to the Sustainable Information Society

ABSTRACT

This article aims to advance information society research and practice by examining and understanding the information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption in enterprises for improving the sustainable information society (SIS). This study employs a quantitative approach to investigate how enterprises adopt ICT, and how this adoption influences different types of sustainability and improves the sustainable information society. The survey questionnaires were used, and data collected from 396 enterprises were analyzed to understand the correlations between the ICT adoption and the sustainability in the SIS. The research findings reveal that the ICT quality, ICT management, and information culture have a significant impact on the sustainability in the SIS, whereas the outlay on ICT does not have such an impact. This study advances the information society research and practice by developing a model to depict the dimensions of ICT adoption and their impact on different types of sustainability in the SIS.     

Realizing the vision for web services: Strategies for dealing with imperfect standards

Organizations considering the adoption of the web services framework for their Information Technology (IT) applications are confronted with a period of technological ferment, as standards for supporting non-trivial business process functionality are not yet in place. Evolving standardization poses challenges in the form of inter-temporal dependencies as organizations’ conformance to the standards that emerge in the future is contingent on their current design choices that need to be made ex-ante without complete information of how standards will evolve. At the same time, there are significant early-mover benefits to be gained by executing an IT strategy using web services as a cornerstone. This paper draws upon coordination theory to develop a conceptual framework outlining three approaches for organizations to deal with changing standardization regimes: (a) The dependencies across components, conforming to different standardization regimes, are continually bridged through intermediary services (e.g., using a protocol adapter that translates to an unanticipated emergent standard), (b) The dependencies across components are minimized through loose coupling so that standardization regime changes for any component have a minimal impact on other components (e.g., encapsulating the functionality susceptible to design change into a module with abstract interfaces), and (c) The impacted components are rapidly reconfigurable as and when standardization regime changes (e.g., by building in “extension” features into applications). The risk for organizations investing in web services can be further managed by mechanisms such as organization’s attention to signals from the periphery, undertaking low-risk experiments to learn in different areas, and bricolage-like improvisations of their legacy components at hand.

Adoption of open source software in software-intensive organizations – A systematic literature review

ContextOpen source software (OSS) is changing the way organizations develop, acquire, use, and commercialize software.ObjectiveThis paper seeks to identify how organizations adopt OSS, classify the literature according to these ways of adopting OSS, and with a focus on software development evaluate the research on adoption of OSS in organizations.MethodBased on the systematic literature review method we reviewed publications from 24 journals and seven conference and workshop proceedings, published between 1998 and 2008. From a population of 24,289 papers, we identified 112 papers that provide empirical evidence on how organizations actually adopt OSS.ResultsWe show that adopting OSS involves more than simply using OSS products. We moreover provide a classification framework consisting of six distinctly different ways in which organizations adopt OSS. This framework is used to illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges organizations meet when approaching OSS, to show that OSS can be adopted successfully in different ways, and to organize and review existing research. We find that existing research on OSS adoption does not sufficiently describe the context of the organizations studied, and it fails to benefit fully from related research fields. While existing research covers a large number of topics, it contains very few closely related studies. To aid this situation, we offer directions for future research.ConclusionThe implications of our findings are twofold. On the one hand, practitioners should embrace the many opportunities OSS offers, but consciously evaluate the consequences of adopting it in their own context. They may use our framework and the success stories provided by the literature in their own evaluations. On the other hand, researchers should align their work, and perform more empirical research on topics that are important to organizations. Our framework may be used to position this research and to describe the context of the organization they are studying.     

Factors explaining adoption and implementation processes for web accessibility standards within eGovernment systems and organizations

Local government organizations such as municipalities often seem unable to fully adopt or implement web accessibility standards even if they are actively pursuing it. Based on existing adoption models, this study identifies factors in five categories that influence the adoption and implementation of accessibility standards for local government websites. Awareness of these factors is important for stakeholders adopting and implementing web accessibility standards. To further develop and understand these factors, this study has identified and interviewed experts in the field of (organizational) accessibility. This has led to an extension of the existing models. The extended model was then validated by interviews with key stakeholders. The outcome of this study places existing adoption models in a new context. The result is an adoption model that contributes better to explaining adoption and implementation processes within eGovernment systems and organizations. This adoption model aims to better help local governments in the identification of factors influencing the actual adoption and implementation of web accessibility standards in their situation. The model explains how factors in the different categories contribute to the adoption and implementation of web accessibility standards. The model may also be applicable to the adoption and implementation of other guidelines and (open) standards within local government.     

Examining the effects of information system characteristics and perceived usefulness on post adoption usage of information systems

Understanding post adoption behavior has emerged as an important issue in IS research. Organizations have invested in a plethora of Information Systems (IS) and the benefits that can be gained from these systems depend on their usage. Prior research has examined factors that impact users’ intention to continue using the IS. However, comprehending post adoption IS usage behavior has not received much attention. Building on TAM and IS success model, this study proposes that information quality and system integration influence perceived IS usefulness which will then drive post adoption usage of the IS. Post adoption IS usage is conceptualized as a broad concept that includes extended usage and exploratory usage. Data (N = 1032) was collected to test the model, in the context of a web-based student information system that students use to manage their academic work. The results show that at the post adoption stage, perceived IS usefulness is a good predictor of extended usage and exploratory usage. However, surprisingly IS usefulness was found to explain a much larger variance in exploratory usage. Information quality and system integration were found to influence IS usefulness. However, information quality also has a direct affect on extended usage, while system integration directly influenced exploratory usage. Assessment of the moderating role of gender and internet experience on model relationships reveals interesting insights. Implications are drawn for future research and practice.     

Adoption of open source software in organizations: A socio-cognitive perspective

Open source software (OSS) is an important trend in the information technology adoption landscape. It has received considerable attention in the scientific literature, but mostly in the professional press. In fact, there is much debate over its actual commercial and organizational value. Since the public discourse accompanying an IT may influence adoption decisions, it is important to consider IT specialists’ perceptions of the discourse on OSS. In this study, we investigated the relationship between IT specialists’ profiles, IT specialists’ reception of the public discourse on OSS, and their organizations’ receptivity to OSS. Drawing on the socio-cognitive perspective of IT innovation adoption and the organizing vision theory, a survey of 271 IT specialists was conducted to examine these issues. Our results indicate that a majority of IT specialists in our sample are rather neutral about the OSS concept conveyed in the public discourse. However, our sample also comprises respondents with more extreme perceptions who can be classified as either supporters or detractors. Our results indicate that detractors have more years of experience but have been less exposed to OSS than supporters, and that IT specialists’ perceptions of the OSS concept are positively associated with their organizations’ openness to OSS adoption and, to a lesser extent, with the existence of an organizational policy that favors OSS adoption. Altogether, our findings provide strong support for the organizing vision theory and the idea that the popularity of an IT innovation concept favors the adoption of the material IT innovation in organizations. By providing a preliminary test of a nomological network of IT specialists’ perceptions of the OSS concept, our study offers insights as to why organizations may or may not take OSS into account in their software procurement decisions.