Information Systems & Operations Management

Emerging evidence seems to indicate that most systems development organizations are attempting to utilize both agile and traditional approaches. This study aims to understand the reasons organizations feel the need for this unlikely juxtaposition and the organizational challenges in sustaining the opposing cultures. Drawing on the extensive literature in organizational theory and management, we advocate ambidexterity as a viable solution to systems development organizations attempting to harness the benefits of both agile and traditional development.

Existing research on outsourcing uses several different theoretical perspectives to study outsourcing, including the resource based view, transaction costs analysis, contingency theory and agency theory. While studying a phenomenon from different viewpoints increases our understanding on the subject, we need a consistent theoretical framework to consolidate the ideas generated in the field, compare and contrast previous results, and build on for future analysis. In this paper, we integrate the concepts of these four theoretical viewpoints into a unified sourcing framework that encompasses both the antecedents to outsourcing as well as the consequences of outsourcing. The antecedents to outsourcing include environmental perceptions and resource perceptions. The consequences of outsourcing include greater environmental fit, higher rents, lower production costs and higher agency costs.

Although practitioners are facing increasing complexities and high rates of failure in IS development, research in the field has not yet developed adequate theory to address the issues involved. This study first analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of existing strategies of IS development, agile and traditional development, and then theorizes four underlying dimensions along which these strategies differ: change responsiveness, knowledge tacitness, people-driven, and customer collaboration. The strategy contingency perspective is utilized to theorize the effects of organizational culture and project uncertainty of IS development strategy. Using this perspective, a framework is developed that identifies two new strategies of IS development, in addition to the existing traditional and agile strategies. These two strategies of IS development are labeled the responsive process strategy and the creative optimization strategy. This may help explain practitioner surveys that report that most organizations adopt agile practices for some projects and not others, and that

All Rights Reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have reached its present form without the valuable contributions and advice of my dissertation committee. I am very grateful to my chair, Dr. Teng, for engaging and stimulating me in intellectual debate and brainstorming for research schemes, for dedicating his time and effort into careful and detailed analysis of all my ideas, both good and bad, for catching all my missteps, logical leaps, and flights of fancy in our endeavors to contribute to the body of knowledge in the field of information systems. I have to thank Dr. Nerur, for his friendship, support, encouragement, and opportunities provided, from my very first days as a doctoral student to my dissertation. I have to thank Dr. Whiteside, for making the time and patiently listening to my ideas and models, and correcting my many errors and omissions on my statistical analysis. I have to thank Dr. Rasheed, for sparking my interest in the strategy literature, and giving me valuable insight on the nature of the constructs, their measures, and their relationships. I have to thank Dr. Song, for his patience in listening to my ideas and giving me feedback on my many and frequent changes on my dissertation. Last but not least, I have to thank all the faculty, staff and doctoral students of the College of Business for providing me with all the help and support I needed.

While empirical findings indicate that the IT-productivity relationship varies by industry, review research notes the lack of conceptual and empirical studies explaining these differences . This paper conceptualizes an industry-level variable that is crucial to the IT-Productivity relationship: whether an industry produces physical products or information products. As IT is primarily used for information processing , industries that make products composed of information have very different IT effects from those that produce products composed of physical materials, and this may be the most important difference in IT effects between industries . The few papers in this area study the IT-Productivity link at the industry or sector level, and find that information product industries have less of a link between IT and productivity than physical product industries. Drawing upon the information-processing view and the concept of industry information-intensity [48], we hypothesize that this link should be in the opposite direction. Our empirical tests using a seven-year dataset find two differences in IT intensity between the two types of industries: Information product industries are not only more IT intense, but the variance in IT intensity is much higher than in physical product industries. In addition, we find that the firm-level IT-Productivity relationship is much stronger in information product industries than in physical product industries, in contrast with prior industry and sector level studies.

In this paper we test a primary postulate of the resource-based theory of IT business value. From this perspective, IT is not rare but pervasive, and it is only the combination of investments with other resources that makes the investment inimitable. Therefore, the effect of IT on firm performance cannot be direct effects, but rather firm performance can only be affected when IT expenditures are combined with other investments. We test this theory using panel data of large firms spanning 7 years. Firm level data is gathered from Compustat and matched to IS Budget data from InformationWeek's annual rankings. We find that no support for the RBV postulate that IT Expenditure cannot have direct competitive advantage but must be combined with expenditure on other assets to effect firm performance. Instead we find support for the opposing hypotheses: IT expenditure and capital expenditures have independent, direct effects on firm revenue as well as firm profit, even in the presence of the interaction variable. The results imply that IT investments may be a source of direct competitive advantage, unlike the postulate of the resource-based view theorists. This may be because an IT system has embedded knowledge and creates knowledge, making it rare and imperfectly imitable. Rather than investing in generic IT systems and trying to obtain uniqueness from investments in complementary resources, firms can try embedding firm-specific knowledge when designing or modifying their systems and using their systems to create knowledge. This is the first study to test the resource-based view's postulate that value from IT comes only with the combination of IT investments and investments in other assets and not from direct effects. By disproving this postulate, we open the door to new hypotheses based on knowledge in and from IT systems.

In 2010, Fairfield University received a three-year grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through Higher Education for Development (HED), to support a university service-learning program to deliver educational material on health-related topics to middle school students in Bambey, Senegal, a rural area, 60 miles east of the capital, Dakar. Fairfield University must work with the selected partner, Université de Bambey, which has four rural campuses, about 20 miles apart, connected by both paved and dirt roads. Resources are scarce, as is a consistent electricity and water supply. However, the faculty is dedicated and competent, and the students are vibrant, intelligent, and hard working. The various courses of study are distributed across the campuses, unlike the variety on a single campus in the United States. Each Université de Bambey campus might have just two or three majors of study. The USAID/HED grant specifies that Service-Learning must be used to deliver the training, and the use of computer technology is essential. The project will begin with pretesting of the professors and students, followed by testing at the end of the project, to assess the success of the project.

While empirical findings indicate that the IT-productivity relationship varies by industry, review research notes the lack of conceptual and empirical studies explaining these differences [39]. This paper conceptualizes an industry-level variable that is crucial to the IT-Productivity relationship: whether an industry produces physical products or information products. As IT is primarily used for information processing [18], industries that make products composed of information have very different IT effects from those that produce products composed of physical materials, and this may be the most important difference in IT effects between industries [48]. The few papers in this area study the IT-Productivity link at the industry or sector level, and find that information product industries have less of a link between IT and productivity than physical product industries. Drawing upon the information-processing view [18] and the concept of industry information-intensity [48], we hypot...

Urban migration in developing countries is expected to increase the number of slum inhabitants from 940 million in 2003 to over two billion by 2030. As socio-economic status at birth is a strong predictor of future socio-economic status, slum children seem destined to a life of poverty. However, emerging examples of empowerment appear to demonstrate possibilities of information technology to benefit the lives of slum children. In this paper, we use social cognitive theory to study why children participate in IT learning in the absence of formal training courses, using the constructs of symbolizing, forethought, visceral, self-regulating and self-reflecting human capabilities. In doing this, we attempt to validate a theoretical basis for human capabilities of slum children to overcome the forces of environmental determinism working against them.

Although practitioners are facing increasing complexities and high rates of failure in IS development, research in the field has not yet developed adequate theory to address the issues involved. This study first analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of existing strategies of IS development, agile and traditional development, and then theorizes four underlying dimensions along which these strategies differ: change responsiveness, knowledge tacitness, people-driven, and customer collaboration. The strategy contingency perspective is utilized to theorize the effects of organizational culture and project uncertainty of IS development strategy. Using this perspective, a framework is developed that identifies two new strategies of IS development, in addition to the existing traditional and agile strategies. These two strategies of IS development are labeled the responsive process strategy and the creative optimization strategy. This may help explain practitioner surveys that report that ...

Although practitioners are facing increasing complexities and high rates of failure in IS development, research in the field has not yet developed adequate theory to address the issues involved. This study first analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of existing strategies of IS development, agile and traditional development, and then theorizes four underlying dimensions along which these strategies differ: change responsiveness, knowledge tacitness, people-driven, and customer collaboration. The strategy contingency perspective is utilized to theorize the effects of organizational culture and project uncertainty of IS development strategy. Using this perspective, a framework is developed that identifies two new strategies of IS development, in addition to the existing traditional and agile strategies. These two strategies of IS development are labeled the responsive process strategy and the creative optimization strategy. This may help explain practitioner surveys that report that ...

Existing research on outsourcing uses several different theoretical perspectives to study outsourcing, including the resource based view, transaction costs analysis, contingency theory and agency theory. While studying a phenomenon from different viewpoints increases our understanding on the subject, we need a consistent theoretical framework to consolidate the ideas generated in the field, compare and contrast previous results, and build on for future analysis. In this paper, we integrate the concepts of these four theoretical viewpoints into a unified sourcing framework that encompasses both the antecedents to outsourcing as well as the consequences of outsourcing. The antecedents to outsourcing include environmental perceptions and resource perceptions. The consequences of outsourcing include greater environmental fit, higher rents, lower production costs and higher agency costs.

While international relationships and study abroad opportunities are very common in the arts and humanities such opportunities are also becoming more common in allied health. University of Bambey (Senegal) in collaboration with Fairfield University (USA) initiate global activities for many reasons for example personal interest encouragement of school administrators community/public health course expansion or implementation of global service learning in order to improve the attainment of health millennium development goals in Senegal. Opportunities for Bambey University faculties may be educative research or for technical experiences. For students they are participating in a E-learning program such as Malaria HIV/AIDS Tuberculosis. Social cultural and political systems dictate differences in beliefs values assumptions and norms between and among residents in all countries. Lack of understanding of these differences may result in misunderstanding and embarrassing and troublesome situa...

Research on information technology (IT) business value posit complex relationships from either a resource based view (RBV) or transaction cost economics (TCE) viewpoint. In contrast with the rich theoretical work, empirical studies have taken a ' black box' approach, testing relatively simple models. In this study, we integrate the theoretical and empirical work into a unified model of IT value.

for a project in Senegal (Appendix B), to disseminate health information to rural populations using technology through Service Learning. The project would run from October 2010 through September 2013. The main campus for UADB is in Bambey, a village 125 kilometers from the capital Dakar, and two rural campuses in Diourbel, and Ngoundiane, about 35 kilometers north and south of Bambey respectively. The remote campuses are off the only paved road in the area, and lack modern amenities. Instructors teach at multiple campuses, and they are driven in university vehicles over unpaved trails for over 40 minutes. They are then engaged in instruction for at least two hours, after which they return to Bambey. Presently, only the Bambey campus has access to the Internet via an unstable ADSL line, whereas the other campuses have poor CDMA technology (the base station is about 30km from the campus) Internet connection. The students at the Ngoundiane campus learn Math, Physics, Chemistry, Decisional Informatics, Web design, and other computer topics despite the lack of access to the Internet. As part of HED's strategy to spread education to the rural population, UADB technical staff and Fairfield University counterparts engaged in the design of a campus-wide WiFi project, and using available WiMax technology to distribute the Internet signal to the other campuses.

Last year I wrote the following words regarding the faceless and nameless (in this circumstance) people who make up the ''Peers'' of the peer reviewed Journal. I can't make the words say my feelings any better. It is with great appreciation that the Journal publishes the list of Reviewers for 2009. The number of cogs in the wheel of journal publishing are numerous, but none for a peer-reviewed journal more than the peers themselves. We are happy to express our gratitude for their excellent and untiring work. To the public they are unrecognized, but to the Editorial Board they are the Journal's foundation.

Although practitioners are facing increasing complexities and high rates of failure in IS development, research in the field has not yet developed adequate theory to address the issues involved. This study first analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of existing strategies of IS development, agile and traditional development, and then theorizes four underlying dimensions along which these strategies differ: change responsiveness, knowledge tacitness, people-driven, and customer collaboration. The strategy contingency perspective is utilized to theorize the effects of organizational culture and project uncertainty of IS development strategy. Using this perspective, a framework is developed that identifies two new strategies of IS development, in addition to the existing traditional and agile strategies. These two strategies of IS development are labeled the responsive process strategy and the creative optimization strategy. This may help explain practitioner surveys that report that most organizations adopt agile practices for some projects and not others, and that