Managing human resources and skills for information technology (IT) presents a challenging task for executives, more so when new ITs are involved. Lack of familiarity with the technology, the learning curve associated with its incorporation, and the relative paucity of skilled personnel serve to alter the strategies for management of human resources and skills. This paper presents a system dynamics approach for examining alternative strategies for skill management and supporting decisions during the implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in an organization. For projects involving SOA, the initial planning and implementation of the underlying architecture entail higher costs and slower delivery of initial SOA applications. The use of appropriate IT human resource management strategies for SOA projects is critical for successful SOA implementation. The complexity associated with the fluctuating demand for IT skills, coupled with the need for highly skilled senior architects and professional developers in SOA projects, as well as inevitable delays in skill acquisition, makes this a challenging task. This paper examines the impact of alternative staffing strategies under various environmental conditions and provides guidance for staffing decisions. Using a design science methodology, it employs system dynamics as a vehicle for allowing human resource managers to examine the impact of alternative staffing strategies under a variety of environmental conditions.

Today, more and more software are augmented with service-oriented packaging. At the same time, more and more business and government services are provided and offered in the form of software. However, there are debates on whether and how much service engineering has in common with software engineering.

A variety of information and communication media have been employed to support the interaction of consumers with products and sales representatives in electronic-commerce (EC). But, the question of what impact those media have on consumers in EC has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the richness of consumers’ interaction with products and with sales representatives on changes in their attitude towards and their intention to use business-to-consumer (B2C) EC. Controlled lab experiments were conducted using two types of products and multiple levels of interaction richness. The results show that interaction richness has positive impact on consumers’ attitude towards B2C EC. Additionally, the study finds that the impact is stronger in the case of purchasing a high-complexity product than a low-complexity product, and that consumers’ attitude change is positively related with their intention to use B2C EC. Differential effects on two facets of attitude, ease of use in accomplishing the tasks and usefulness were observed leading to interesting implications and future research directions.

Although there has been a pickup in the growth of business-to-consumer electronic commerce (EC) recently, the overall growth appears to have failed to live up to the various forecasts. Notwithstanding the concerns of security and privacy, this paper posits that for complex products and services offered on the web, existing EC interfaces (ECIs) lack the necessary "richness" to overcome the virtual nature that consumers face compared with a physical store. We empirically validate a conceptual framework that exists in the literature to address these issues of ECI design by drawing on insights from contingency research in information system (IS) design and media choice behavior. This paper finds that a fit or congruence between the product type and the ECI richness (in product information representation, and product-related interaction and communication between the consumer and vendor) leads to superior outcomes. Specifically, buying a complex product (e.g., digital camera) on the Web requires a greater ECI richness in the form of experiencing higher social presence and/or higher product presence. On the other hand, a lean ECI is sufficient for a simple product (e.g., diskette). The role of tolerance for ambiguity (TA), which is an individual difference variable, in this relationship is also examined. A significant three-way fit of TA with ECI richness and product types on consumer behavior is found. A number of implications and future research extensions are discussed

Significant research about the impact of information presentation on decision processes, group-decision support systems, and multicriteria decision making has occurred over the past 10 to 15 years. Advances in hardware and software technologies have significantly reduced costs and enhanced information presentation capability, specifically in the areas of virtual reality and visual interactive modeling (VIM). These visualization technologies can aid in the assimilation of complex qualitative and quantitative information by the decision maker and allow the abstraction of vast information space. Thus, in group-decision situations, visualization has the potential to enhance the decision makers' ability to make appropriate tradeoffs and improve communication between group members resulting in quicker and better consensus decisions. This paper focuses on the study of the effectiveness of advanced information-presentation technologies, such as VIM in complex decision situations involving multiple criteria and groups of decision makers. The effectiveness of VIM is evaluated through a controlled experimental study. The study finds that VIM leads to greater efficiency in decision making and improved group-member attitude and satisfaction with the decision-making process and group-decision solution. However, somewhat contrary to our a priori expectations, the quality of the decision that is made by the groups using visual-interaction modeling is not better than those without this support.

Grounded on principles of manufacturing design, component-based software development (CBSD) has been viewed as the future trend in software development. In this paper, we propose a methodology for component fabrication and argue that, as in classical product development, business strategy of component development companies must guide the design of reusable business components. Accordingly, we link business strategy with component design through managerial goals (identified as cost effectiveness, ease of assembly, customization, reusability, and maintainability). These managerial goals are then mapped to technical features (identified as coupling, cohesion, number of components, component size, and complexity). We develop a formal model, called Business Strategy-based Component Design that uses the object-oriented model of a business to derive the component structure by grouping appropriate object classes to achieve the desired business strategy. We examine the validity of the model by a two-phase application process.

Component-based development (CDB) promises to reduce complexity and cost of software development and maintenance through reuse. For CBD to be successful, a vibrant market for commercial business components is essential. One of the key requirements of an active market for business components is an effective scheme for classifying and describing them at various levels of detail, as well as a corresponding repository for storing and retrieving these components. Such a scheme needs to support various constituents such as business users, managers, and application assemblers. The scheme and repository should help users and managers to select components that match their requirements and aid application assemblers in identifying components most compatible with their deployment environment (such as the platform) and system inputs (such as data types). Drawing from the concepts of group technology and software reuse paradigm, this paper proposes a scheme for classifying and describing business components and the design of a knowledge-based repository for their storage and retrieval. The proposed scheme is implemented in a prototype repository. The effectiveness of the prototype and the underlying classification and coding scheme is assessed empirically through controlled experiments. Results support the assertion that the scheme is effective in enhancing the users' and analysts' ability to find the needed business components.

Consumer interaction with product information is one of the critical components in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce environments. Online consumers' characteristics can be expected to play an important role when designing how product information is presented in such e-commerce environments. We suggest that online consumers' personality traits impact effectiveness of the presentation of product information on e-commerce sites and the extent to which the various e-commerce environments are effective. In this article, we propose and empirically validate relationships among online consumers' personality traits, product information presentation richness and on-line consumer behaviour in e-commerce environments. Results show that effectiveness of product information presentation varies by online consumers' psychological types, and that rich product information presentation significantly influences the online buying behaviour of intuitive types, and feeling types, rather than sensing and thinking types. Discussion of the results and their implications for theory and practice as well as limitations and future research directions are presented.

Object-orientation and distributed systems are quickly becoming norms for new system development, generating renewed interest in distribution schemes traditionally directed at relational databases. Though a number of facilitating technologies, such as EJB, COM, or CORBA, are available, pragmatic, and rigorous approaches for effective distribution are still lacking. In this paper, we develop an approach for deriving object distribution models by exploiting design information. The approach exploits information realistically available during the design stage, without requiring guesstimates of operational parameters. It spans multiple layers, mappings across which may be adjusted depending upon changes in assumptions and operational conditions to create specific models. We demonstrate the approach by operationalizing it to create a model for object distribution in closely coupled client/server configurations. The detailed model we demonstrate, therefore, represents one specific instantiation of our approach. The model is accompanied by a decision support procedure that assists the designer in the search for a satisficing solution in the resulting combinatorial multiple criteria problem. We briefly describe a research prototype that served as proof-of-concept and demonstrate usefulness based on an analysis of results obtained for distribution of a real-world object-oriented application.

Component based software development is carried out in two phases: component building and application assembly. The key to building business components is a formal approach for identifying the components. The paper describes such an approach, which assists in identifying the components from an Analysis Level Object Model, representing a business domain. The approach makes use of a clustering algorithm, certain constraints, a predefined rule and a set of heuristics. The approach has been implemented in a tool named 'CompMaker' and was used for identifying components for an auto insurance claims domain.

We posit that the current electronic commerce (EC) systems are not user-oriented. Consumers in an EC environment find it difficult to deal with the inherent nature of virtual reality in their interaction. We propose a conceptual framework to address such an issue by drawing on insights from contingency research in information systems design and media choice behavior. The basic theme of this model, called the congruence model, is that for an EC systems environment to have favorable impact on a consumer, the system must have a good fit with both the products/services that are sold/provided and the users it supports. An initial validity of this conceptual framework is demonstrated by working with a few product and user types. A detailed evaluation of eight different commercial web sites dealing with four different product categories provides additional support to the proposed theory. We expect our conceptual model to spur significant future research on this important phenomenon.

The availability of micro-, mini-, and supercomputers has complicated the laws governing the economies of scale in computers. A recent study by Ein-Dor [7] concludes that it is most effective to accomplish any task on the least powerful type of computer capable of performing it. This change in cost/performance, and the promise of increased reliability, modularity, and better response time has resulted in an increased tendency to decentralize and distribute computing power. But some economic factors, such as the communication expenses incurred and increased storage with distributed systems are working against the tendency to decentralize. It is clear that in many instances the optimal solution will be an integration of computers of varying power.