Social media are increasingly popular, worldwide, and when social media technologies extend from the Western markets in which they were developed into the Eastern markets where they are now used, marketing strategies that support technology uses in new cultural contexts must be developed. To inform this process achieve this, social media researchers must learn new ways of thinking about technology in its cultural context. In a comparative study of the Southeast Asian social media markets of Vietnam and Singapore, we induce a grounded theory perspective of social media cultures, comparing across instances of both an emerging market and an advanced market in the hemispheric region. We find the Vietnamese culture of social media use orients around economic productivity, Social Commerce, leveraging social connections to generate consumer-to-consumer commerce largely outside of government notice and taxation. The Singaporean culture of social media revolves around the important and highly implicit notion of Influence Commerce. Singaporeans are experts in their application of social media presence to monetize the process of exerting social influence on networks of information and opinion. The Singaporean media use culture takes place with full knowledge and support of the relevant government Bureaus since most internally produced social media influence is political in nature and friendly to the ruling powers.

Over the years, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 have promoted and prospered user-generated content, ease of use, interoperability, and virtual communities. Indeed, a growing number of online platforms and virtual communities contribute to our society and economy by maximally sharing knowledge among numerous participants. Hence, it is necessary to understand the participation-motivation of knowledge sharing in various virtual communities. Using a sample of American virtual communities of interest, this study examines a model of knowledge sharing based on social capital theory and social cognitive theory. This research echoes prior studies with similar and even stronger evidence. Also, the results suggest a significant moderating effect of gender difference on knowledge sharing in virtual communities when participants share a common language and vision.

In this article, we demonstrate a novel use of case research to generate an empirical function through qualitative generalization. This innovative technique applies interpretive case analysis to the problem of defining and generalizing an empirical cost function for test cases through qualitative interaction with an industry cohort of subject matter experts involved in software testing at leading technology companies. While the technique is fully generalizable, this article demonstrates this technique with an example taken from the important field of software testing. The huge amount of software development conducted in today's world makes taking its cost into account imperative. While software testing is a critical aspect of the software development process, little attention has been paid to the cost of testing code, and specifically to the cost of test cases, in comparison to the cost of developing code. Our research fills the gap by providing a function for estimating the cost of test cases.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are enterprise systems that facilitate maintenance of buyer-seller relationships with clients in consumer and business marketing channels. These systems permit firms to better tailor their offerings, to increase market intelligence and achieve increased competency in the markets where they operate. Unfortunately, the ratio of CRM failures to CRM successes exceeds 2-1; little is known about why such an important customer support utility might be so seemingly ineffective because there are few studies that deal with CRM failures and the factors leading to or preventing success. Utilizing a grounded theory methodology, this article spans the disciplines of marketing and information systems in the process of inducing the reasons for CRM failure and success. Results indicate that implementation factors play a significant role in CRM outcomes.

Task-related conflict and person-related conflict in software testing are inevitable and can impact the effectiveness and efficiency of the software development process. The dimensionality of conflict in software testing is reasonably well understood, although in past research both types of conflict have frequently been modeled as reflective constructs that can obstruct the effectiveness of their use as organizational assessment and training tools. One contribution of this study is an empirical model of conflict sources in software engineering; such sources of conflict threaten to derail efficient software development outcomes in firms. A second contribution of this research is the development of a formative measurement model for purposes of development of assessing task conflict and person conflict in software teams. These validated measures can be utilized as training and development instruments for on-the-job remediation of development team conflict. As is indicated in the organizational behavior and software engineering literature, deploying valid measures of workplace stressors such as conflict can lead to the managerial application of effective strategies and tactics to improve workplace morale and satisfaction, to the great benefit of productivity and retention.

The primary role of testers is to verify and validate the software produced by developers to ensure its quality. Testing is designed to catch problems in the software and report them for correction, so it is a conflict-laden, confrontational, and judgmental process. This “audit” role of testing is inherently adversarial, ensuring the development of components of interpersonal conflict judgments between developers and testers. Prior research indicates that such conflict is likely to be negatively associated with software quality and job satisfaction, producing negative judgments about the artifact production process and about the job itself. This study addresses the question: How do judgments of conflict between developers and testers impact the software development process? The authors develop and empirically test a research model which proposes that the conflict judgment targets of both the tasks and the persons who perform them will have direct impact on both software quality and job satisfaction judgments. Results of testing this model indicate that interpersonal judgments arising from conflict, as well as judgments made by testers and developers about the conflict targets of tasks and persons negatively influence subsequent software quality and job satisfaction judgments. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The achievement of governmental transformation through the use of electronically delivered services is a worthy goal that requires significant planning and research to achieve. In order to reach transformational paradigm shifts in governmental operation, it will first be necessary to understand and optimize present governmental e-Service provisions. Of these, the revenue function of taxation is paramount. This paper describes factors related to the use and acceptance by accounting professionals of information technology intended to facilitate electronic tax filing systems. Though tested in the context of governmental tax management systems in Turkey, our findings on the use and acceptance of e-Tax systems are relevant and applicable to a great number of nations and contexts as the ongoing electronic transformation of the governmental revenue system contributes to efforts to transform governments through alternative services delivery venues and channels. We discover that intention to use automated systems as part of the governmental treasury function transformation is hindered by factors that mediate actual plans to do so, mostly in terms of normative pressures and perceptions of behavioral control, which training and education may well ameliorate. Hence, transformation of the treasury function in Turkey is only partially complete and will require additional support, direction and training on the part of the government in its interactions with the tax professionals who interact with the emergent automated system.

The ability to effectively manage external customer satisfaction through IT-based Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) is well documented in the literature. The concept of applying such technologies in Business to Employee relationships to manage the firm's relationships with its employees is not. By extending the CRM paradigm to consider the service of internal customers, we characterize the emergent concept of Employee Relationship Management systems (ERM) for investigation. We find that employee satisfaction with ERM systems designed to provide access to benefits and other important employee services is largely a function of systems quality perceptions, as moderated by employee perceptions of system usefulness. Specifically, we believe our results suggest that high-quality systems implementations will not produce high degrees of employee satisfaction with ERM systems unless such systems are also found by the employee to be highly useful for their intended purpose. This highlights the critical role of accurate assessments of user requirements matched to specific needs from human resources-based systems support in the analysis phase of system design.

Computer-based communication technologies are increasingly important to personal and organizational communication. One important factor related to the adoption and diffusion of communication innovations is critical mass. Critical mass influences the adoption and diffusion of interactive communication innovations, both through network externalities and through sustainability of the innovation. Unfortunately, critical mass is difficult to measure and is typically only demonstrable after the critical mass point has been reached. Potential adopters’ perceptions of critical mass also may be important to adoption decisions. In this paper, we extend this thinking using a synthesis of the Theory of Reasoned Action and Diffusion of Innovation theory by developing a research model. The model is empirically tested using survey data that are analyzed using partial least squares. The focal innovation is instant messaging. Results indicate that perceived critical mass influences use intentions directly and through perceptions of the characteristics of the innovation. The perceived innovation characteristics impact attitude toward use, which in turn impacts use intentions. The model predicts a sizable and significant portion of both attitudes and use intentions. Further, perceived critical mass is able to explain a significant portion of the variance in each perceived innovation characteristic. Implications for research and practice are discussed.