In today's world, organizations rely on cybersecurity end-user compliance as an essential practical parameter. Yet cybersecurity compliance remains a challenge, and failures are commonplace. But why? In addressing this question, we argue that ISP compliance is neither too monolithic nor too granular a construct but needs respecification. We empirically investigate cybersecurity antecedents leading to (i) user protection-centric password management and (ii) system protection-centric update compliance dimensions. The results of our survey of 241 users show differentiating behavioral strands intertwined across different types of compliance, highlighting a unique interplay of attitudes, knowledge, and social factors as antecedents to password and update compliance.

Can mobile payment platforms (MPPs) elevate Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) healthcare service quality (HSQ)? In a region home to more than one billion people yet beset by a paucity of services and infrastructure, mobile devices and platforms are rapidly gaining ground. Rising healthcare needs and costs along with the fact that more than 60% of SSA lives in areas nearly 1.5 miles away from paved roads that lead to hospitals and banks, accessibility to traditional financial services remains a serious concern. As Sub-Saharan hospitals increase billing access via mobile payment platforms, there is little understanding of whether and how mobile payment platforms influence healthcare service quality (HSQ).Drawing upon economic utility and trust perspectives, this study develops an integrative model to examine mobile payment platform utility’s impact on patient trust, commitment, and HSQ perceptions. The model is empirically tested using a survey of 527 patients from the West African country of Nigeria. Results reveal a distinct amalgam of MPP utility, trust, and commitment as antecedents to HSQ perceptions, thus generating important insights and contributing to the ongoing inquiry of how digital platforms in developing countries can influence socio-economic development. Overall, the results support the study’s hypotheses and underscore the important role of MPPs.

Facing a barrage of novel information technology (IT), organizations must invest on the basis of the impact of IT capabilities on the organization’s performance. This research extends Bharadwaj’s (MIS Quarterly 169–196, ) resource-based view of the relationship between IT capability and performance by introducing both the mediating and moderating effects of Digital Business Intensity (DBI). Empirical data collected from CIO’s from US firms reveal that although IT capability positively influences organizational performance, this relationship may differ in strength at different levels of DBI. Our study also finds that IT capability is important in determining DBI, which in turn influences organizational performance. Findings highlight tensions between DBI exploration and IT capabilities exploitation. Results also suggest that companies that leverage their existing IT capabilities to drive DBI are more adept at securing performance returns. However, when DBI investments do not complement existing IT capabilities, DBI appears to dampen performance, further accentuated for high-DBI firms.

Do acquisitions lead to instrumental innovations related to the acquired knowledge? Past arguments on vertical integration espouse how a quest for knowledge drives acquisitions culminating in innovation performance. Using Google and Yahoo as cases-in-point, we examine how facets of acquired innovation knowledge impact post-innovation performance. In particular, the apparently opposing fortunes of Google and Yahoo allow us to investigate the pace of their innovation performance as a hazards model. Results from our investigation highlight Google’s ambidexterity over Yahoo with a swifter, systematic pace of innovation performance – from hastening time to patenting new ideas to the time to releasing new applications from acquisitions.

The rise of electronic markets (EM) and e-commerce came with the promise of disintermediation. Yet, from aggregators to authenticators, the online landscape today is scattered with intermediaries such as EBay and Verisign, aiming to streamline e-commerce transactions and building consumer trust in EM. The central theme of this paper is to understand the contextual factors that lead to consumers’ need to trust intermediaries. In developing our arguments, the paper synthesizes perspectives from information economics, transaction cost economics, and literature on institution-based trust to develop the EM-Trust Framework. Drawing from information economics, the paper contends that EM embody certain inefficiencies, which in turn contribute towards heightening consumer uncertainty, especially under conditions of high information specificity. Heightened consumer uncertainty subsequently reduces consumer trust in EM. It is only in the face of uncertainty and a loss of trust in EM that consumers transfer their need to trust in intermediaries. However, the transference of trust is complete only if agency costs from intermediation lie within consumer thresholds. A mini-case of online mortgage marketplaces is used to illustrate the EM-Trust Framework, thus creating threads for more insightful investigations in the future.

Abstract Department of Information Systems, Washington State University, Pullman, WA. E‐mail: [email protected] The authors examine the need and adoption of teleophthalmology in sub‐Saharan Africa. Ethiopia, like most sub‐Saharan African countries, is faced with limited specialists and health care services. These services are often concentrated in the urban areas, leaving most of the rural population (about 70% of the country) without adequate and timely health care delivery. In Ethiopia, the ratio of ophthalmologists to the population is 1:1,200,000, resulting in inadequate delivery of ophthalmology‐related health care services. Using both primary and secondary data collection approaches, the authors report the need for telemedicine as well as the adoption and application of teleophthalmology in Ethiopia. Further, they present Ethiopia's teleophthalmology network, integrated teleconsultation, and teleeducation services. The authors conclude by presenting this research as a starting point to investigate further teleophthalmology and other telemedicine services for Ethiopia and by extension, other developing countries. Therefore, they bring a much‐underresearched region (sub‐Saharan Africa) and a much‐underresearched technology (telemedicine) to the forefront of information systems (IS) research. It is the authors' hope that colleagues in the field will be motivated to investigate this “forgotten” region of the world that is yet to reap the full potentials of information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Abstract With the increasing globalization of the world economy, there has been a growing interest in the potential contributions of good governance to accelerating the rate of economic and social development in the developing countries, and enhance their smooth integration into the emerging global economy. Simultaneously, developed economies are experiencing an increasing proportion in the contribution of knowledge, information, and telecommunication sectors to their overall gross domestic product. This is placing increased focus on the role and contribution of national information infrastructure to economic productivity, and in extension, to the economic and social development of nations. In this article, the authors explore the link between information and communication technologies (ICTs), governance, and social economic development in the developing countries. They empirically conclude that contributions of ICTs to social–economic development are influenced by sociopolitical governance—leading to national development through more prudent and egalitarian application and use of the ICTs' portfolio. The contingent role of governance on ICTs and national development paves the path towards recognizing the importance of sociopolitical moderators.