Adopting theoretical foundations of the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and technology task fit theory, this study investigates how business managers in different management levels determine BDA use. The major findings suggest that low-level and middle-level managers decide the use of the BDA system from different perspectives. Low-level managers consider individual performance more important in their decision while the middle-level managers believe in organizational readiness and relational knowledge. Also, the relationship between data integrity and data compatibility is greater for the lower-level, while that between data timeliness and data compatibility is more substantial for the middle-level. Concerning the effect of data quality on individual performance, the middle-level perceive data compatibility and data accuracy as more important than the lower-level managers.

E-government on social media has received much attention lately. Despite a recent call for further research into social interaction and communication aspects of e-government on social media, there is still limited empirical evidence regarding why individuals participate in the social aspect of e-government services and how that relates to their expectations and satisfactions. The present work addresses this gap by extending the Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT) to study communication and social interactions in government Facebook groups. The results show that communication quality and responsiveness are two key elements that contribute to the perceived level of usefulness. These two variables together with social interaction had a statistically significant effect on the overall confirmation of expectations. Perceived usefulness and satisfaction predict continuance use intention of e-government social networking services with satisfaction influencing such intention more than perceived usefulness. Further multi-group analyses show that generational difference and usage frequency moderates the relationships of the extended model. Managerial implications are provided.

Under increasing pressure from competitors and consumers, vendor-managed inventory (VMI), which is believed to be conducive to reducing inventory costs and improving distribution and sales, has been a popular system particularly in the retail industry. This present study, by adopting the modified Delphi method, attempts to identify key success factors of VMI implementation in Taiwan manufacturing industry and examine impact of the identified factors. Through three rounds of expert questionnaires, it is found that excellent project management, organizational fit, information sharing, trialability, and top management commitment are the five most important factors in terms of VMI implementation in Taiwan manufacturing industry. Employee training, a good project team, exercise of power, and relative advantages are of secondary importance to Taiwan manufacturing industry. Finally, it is hoped that these identified factors may serve as a guide for manufacturing companies in implementing VMI more effectively and efficiently.

Many hospitals in Taiwan have started to encounter new and fierce competition as a result of the enactment of the National Health Insurance Policy in 1995. Hospitals should strive to use information technology (IT) strategically to improve their competitive advantage and meet the dynamic challenges in this competitive environment. This study adopts the Technology-Organization-Environment framework to understand the effects of contextual factors (e.g., environmental uncertainty and information intensity) and information service competence on the effectiveness of strategic information systems planning (SISP) to improve hospital management efficiency. A field survey was conducted using questionnaires distributed to accredited hospitals that serve patients from different regions/districts and with academic teaching qualifications/capabilities. These hospitals represent approximately a quarter of all hospitals in Taiwan. The findings show that the environmental unpredictability and business competence of IS executives are negatively related to the two SISP constructs: IT participation in the hospital planning and alignment of the IT plan with the comprehensive hospital plan. In addition, the findings demonstrate that information intensity has a significantly positive relation to both aforementioned SISP constructs. Finally, both constructs justify the significant positive correlations with the use of IT in increasing competitive advantages and improving the satisfaction of customers and end users. This research intends to guide the healthcare industry in raising competitive advantages to improve the operational efficiency of hospital management in today's highly digitalized environment.

The most significant challenge in facilitating a professional virtual community (PVC) is maintaining a continuous supply of knowledge from members, especially because lurkers often make up a large portion of an online community. However, we still do not understand how knowledge‐sharing intention (KSI) is formed across poster and lurker groups. Accordingly, this study seeks to provide a fuller understanding of the formation of behavioral intention in PVCs by decomposing the psychological formation of KSI and focusing on factors deemed likely to influence the KSI of posters and lurkers. This study's online survey of 177 posters and 246 lurkers from 3 PVCs demonstrated that enjoyment in helping others positively influenced posters' attitudes toward knowledge sharing, whereas reciprocity and technology adoption variables (perceived ease of use and compatibility) positively influenced lurkers' attitudes. Interpersonal trust and peer influence strongly affected the subjective norm of knowledge sharing in both groups, with posters emphasizing interpersonal trust and lurkers emphasizing peer influence. Furthermore, knowledge self‐efficacy and resource availability enhanced the perceived behavioral control of knowledge sharing in both groups, with knowledge self‐efficacy affecting posters the most and resource availability influencing lurkers the most. The results of this study have important implications for both research and practice.

Computer mediated communication (CMC) technologies have benefited business organizations in many ways. Although there have been numerous studies on email use, studies have only begun to emerge regarding use patterns of instant messaging (IM). This study investigated the use of email and IM within two different cultural settings: United States and Taiwan. Students enrolled in MIS courses from each country were split randomly into the IM and email groups for a problem-solving assignment. The variations of communication outcomes (as measured in volume, quality, and use satisfaction), are checked against two categorical variables (i.e., culture and communication tools), and at the same time controlled for perception on tool ease of use. Results show that culture and communication tools jointly affect all three outcome variables individually. The main effects were also statistically significant for volume and quality, but not for satisfaction. Respondents from different cultures prefer different communication methods, which are also collectively constrained by other factors like preference over contextual information and social norms. Such a difference in media preference, combined with media traits jointly affects the outcomes of communication. Managerial implications are provided.

Why would R&D employees be willing to use an electronic knowledge repository (EKR) for knowledge-sharing? This study integrates a technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate the influence of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations on R&D employees' acceptance of an EKR for knowledge-sharing. Empirical data were collected through a survey, which gathered data from 225 employees working in 10 organisations in Taiwan. The results indicated that (1) reputation and reciprocity were found to be two important antecedents to perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; (2) altruism was also found to be an important antecedent to perceived ease of use; (3) reputation was the most influential factor of perceived usefulness, and another influential factor of perceived usefulness was reciprocity. Three knowledge-sharing motivations that significantly affect the perceived ease of use were listed as reciprocity, altruism, and reputation, according to the relative importance; (4) altruism plays an important role in explaining the EKR usage intentions for knowledge-sharing both directly and indirectly; and (5) the results were consistent with the propositions of TAM. This study contributes theoretically and empirically to the body of EKR usage research and also has practical implications.

Business-to-business (B2B) transactions supported by the World Wide Web (Web) have become a major portion of e-commerce transactions. Despite growth, knowledge of the degree of Web site support capabilities in the B2B transaction process is limited. This paper longitudinally compares how Web sites supported the B2B transaction process in New Zealand and Taiwan between 2001 and 2007. The results indicate that, on average, New Zealand Web sites scored higher than those in Taiwan in both years. Yet, the rate of improvement of Taiwanese Web site scores is significant. Specifically, the support capability of several Web functions, including privacy, company information, financial information and product catalog has improved over the study period. The authors found that the sampled Web sites in New Zealand and Taiwan provide different support capabilities to the activities in the B2B transaction process. Taiwanese Web sites are more concerned with providing after-sale services via the Internet whereas New Zealand Web sites are more concerned with sharing information. These two countries’ Web sites share a similar focus on supporting B2B transactions, which provides strong support for users to conduct product promotion and information provision related activities over the Web. Based on these findings, this study suggests several implications for associated academics and practitioners.

Knowledge management (KM) infrastructure is the foundation for managing and embodying valuable knowledge in firms. Based on the resource-based view (RBV) and process level analysis, this study investigates how KM infrastructure influences market interrelationship performance through innovative business processes. The study collected a sample of 126 hospitals in the Taiwanese healthcare industry. The results suggest that technological capability and cultural capability positively affect market interrelationships via innovative business processes. Cultural capability is associated with market interrelationship performance whereas structural capability is unrelated to innovative business processes. The findings advance understanding of the influence of KM infrastructure on market interrelationship performance as well as provide managerial insights on the influence of innovative business processes on market interrelationships performance.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital and pervasive role in the current development of Taiwan’s economy. Recently, the application of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have enabled large enterprises to have direct contact with their clients via e-commerce technology, which has led to even fiercer competition among the SMEs. This study develops and tests a theoretical model including critical factors which influence ERP adoption in Taiwan’s SMEs. Specifically, four dimensions, including CEO characteristics, innovative technology characteristics, organizational characteristics, and environmental characteristics, are empirically examined. The results of a mail survey indicate that the CEO’s attitude towards information technology (IT) adoption, the CEO’s IT knowledge, the employees’ IT skills, business size, competitive pressure, cost, complexity, and compatibility are all important determinants in ERP adoption for SMEs. The authors’ results are compared with research on IT adoption in SMEs based in Singapore and the United States, while implications of the results are also discussed.

Purpose Instant messaging and e‐mail are popular communication methods on college campuses. However, students' perceptions of the two technologies vary greatly. This study seeks to investigate the differences between instant messaging and e‐mail. Design/methodology/approach A survey was given to 545 college students. Findings Instant messaging is perceived as offering many advantages over e‐mail including conveying emotions, building relationships and ease of use (EU). Users are more likely to use symbols with their instant messages to help communicate. College students find both technologies to be easy to use, but show a preference for the EU of instant messaging. However, despite its perceived functional benefits, instant messaging is only the favored form of communication for personal and social relationships. Originality/value This paper builds on existing research by discussing information richness, EU, the use of emotions, multimedia, playfulness, flow, cognitive fit theory, bounded rationality, perceived commitment, and user satisfaction in the course of the study.

Taiwan deregulated its wireless telecommunication services in 1997. Fierce competition followed, and churn management becomes a major focus of mobile operators to retain subscribers via satisfying their needs under resource constraints. One of the challenges is churner prediction. Through empirical evaluation, this study compares various data mining techniques that can assign a ‘propensity-to-churn’ score periodically to each subscriber of a mobile operator. The results indicate that both decision tree and neural network techniques can deliver accurate churn prediction models by using customer demographics, billing information, contract/service status, call detail records, and service change log.

Due to the rapid changes in information technology (IT), the life cycle to develop an information system has become significantly shorter. Furthermore, companies worldwide have invested much time and effort in developing their existing enterprise application systems in order to maintain their own competitive advantages. Specifically, they are facing a similar problem of preserving the investment. Information system reengineering technology (ISRT) is one way to solve this problem. However, most of the systems reengineered by using traditional ISRT may lack flexibility and reusability and also have some quality concerns. The component-based software engineering can provide some remedy by providing a flexible and reusable enterprise application system. Many companies could benefit from thinking more in terms of building their own business components for their information system areas. This article considers a reengineering approach in order to migrate legacy systems to component-based information systems with a quality control mechanism. Companies can build their own business component libraries in the reengineering process. One additional benefit is to build information systems from business components rather than reinventing the wheel in the future. This study proposed a system architecture and also implemented the prototype system to validate that our mechanism is technically practical. Additionally, we used an example to evaluate that our approach is effective and practicable in the real world.