This dissertation applies the Technology Frames of Reference (TFR) theoretical lens to examine the implementation of a health information exchange (HIE) initiative in southeast USA. It extends the TFR lens by developing Toulminian argument maps to depict frame structure and employing the argument theories of Toulmin, Habermas and Perelman Olbrechts-Tyteca to help analyze the role that argumentation plays in the emergence and development of the technology frames that characterized this HIE endeavor. The argument maps developed in this dissertation helped to assess the level of argumentation within frames and to compare argumentation across frame domains. The argument maps were also used to structurally depict changes in frame salience over time and helped to facilitate the discovery of a prominent perspective blindness or perspective indifference which was the key finding of this dissertation. Previous TFR literature has focused on dysfunctions produced by conflict/alignment issues. This dissertation extends this research by highlighting the role that conflict avoidance or frame apathy may play in producing these dysfunctions. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas New Rhetoric was recommended as a boundary spanning discursive framework that could help ameliorate the problems associated with both inter-frame conflict and frame indifference.

This research investigates the very essence of integration by focusing on the integration of applications for enterprise systems. Integration is a large and complex topic recognized as a key concept in a wide variety of IT domains that dates back to the dawn of the computer era. The evolution of IT integration has included integration of sub-routines of computer programs, integration of separate islands of data to create common databases, and integration of disparate applications to form enterprise systems. Perhaps the most touted characteristic and principal goal of enterprise systems is integration although virtually no research is available regarding this phenomenon. The value of integration is rarely defined either in abstract or practical terms. We generally assume that the value of integration is obvious although there is no evidence that supports this implicit view. To address the lack of evidence, this investigation began by examining the perceptions of three practitioner stakeholder groups about the characteristics and benefits of integration. These groups were senior managers, IT professionals, and end-users. In part I of the two-part study, interviews of 51 practitioners revealed 15 major themes related to practitioner perspectives of the characteristics, benefits, and downsides of applications integration. For part II, a new measure was created based on the literature and the analysis of the phase I interviews. 926 people in three organizations were surveyed. Contributions of the research included a new partially validated instrument to assess attributes and benefits of applications integration, taxonomies were created for integration attributes and perceived benefits, and a model was proposed to frame and study IT integration infrastructures. A foundation was established to evaluate the degree of applications integration for enterprise systems. Several downsides to applications integration were documented. Two new high order constructs (attributes and benefits) were established, along with four attribute dimensions and six benefit dimensions.

This study investigates the factors that influence local government participation in electronic information sharing with state agencies. Although electronic information sharing has the potential to help government agencies to increase productivity and performance, improve policy-making and provide better public services to the citizens, there is still little information available about the factors that antecede electronic information sharing between local and state agencies. Synthesizing the pertinent literature on interagency information sharing and well-established theories such as diffusion of innovations theory, critical mass theory and social exchange theory, this study proposes that local government participation in electronic information sharing with state agencies will be determined by electronic information sharing characteristics, agency characteristics, and environmental characteristics. This study employs both quantitative and qualitative research techniques. The first part of the study involves the collection and analysis of survey data from local law enforcement agencies to test the proposed research framework and hypotheses. The second part of the study involves the collection and analysis of qualitative data related to a major state-local electronic information sharing initiative to seek additional support for the findings of the quantitative data analysis, as well as identify factors that remained undiscovered in the quantitative analysis. The findings of these studies suggest that electronic information sharing characteristics, agency characteristics, and environmental characteristics, as well as other factors tend to influence local agency participation in electronic information sharing initiatives. The study has a number of theoretical and practical implications. It contributes to the state of the knowledge in the information systems, public administration and management domains. The findings of this study are important and relevant to federal, state and local government agencies and the directors and IT managers of these agencies. Once the factors that facilitate or hinder participation in electronic information sharing initiatives are identified, specific strategies can be developed to increase electronic information sharing among government agencies. Based on findings of the quantitative and qualitative studies, a preliminary set of strategies is offered, which could be potentially used to increase local agency participation in electronic information sharing initiatives.

Assessing value of IT infrastructure investments has been both difficult and ambiguous. This research develops and tests a conceptual framework to understand the productivity process. A lagged and recursive framework is used to trace the relationship between IT infrastructure investments, infrastructure design, and organizational productivity along with contingencies of IT management and the environment. A major contribution of this study is the use of the systems perspective to disaggregate the concepts of IT infrastructure and productivity into collectively exhaustive types. Findings reveal that IT investments do not significant affect productivity but do so when used to develop an IT infrastructure design. IT management is seen to strongly influence IT infrastructure design. Similarly, organizational environment appears to significantly influence the type of productivity focus for a firm. The study adds to the existing body of knowledge through a holistic investigation of the multi-level relationship between IT infrastructure configurations, contingencies, and productivity.

In spite of numerous socioeconomic problems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there has been an increasing growth of Internet connectivity, and much business activity has arisen to take advantage of this technology. This dissertation investigates experts assessments of the pertinent factors affecting e-business in SSA from the dual perspective of national infrastructure and culture. I review the literature related to e-business in SSA and develop three conceptual models that identify various pertinent factors and hypothesize their interrelationships in determining e-business outcomes. The first model includes all the factors I identify; the second model examines those factors that operate at the national level; and the third includes those that operate at the cultural level. For empirical insight into my research questions, I design and conduct a survey that empirically solicits information from business practitioners, government officials, officials of nongovernmental organizations, and academics that have expertise related to e-business among urban SMEs in SSA. I use the survey responses to test the research models and to help answer my research questions. The overall model explains approximately 30 percent of the variation in e-business capabilities and in e-business value. I find that from a national infrastructure perspective, experts believe that non-specific general information and communication technology (ICT) policies are not very influential, while policies targeted specifically towards e-business are important in affecting e-business capabilities and in obtaining value from e-business, as well as ICT infrastructure. ICT infrastructure only affects e-business capabilities, but not its value. Experts believe that national governance institutions positively affect e-business value, but not capabilities. They do not believe that commercial infrastructure significantly affects e-business outcomes. Additionally, from the cultural perspective, experts believe that ICT transfer implementation strongly affects both e-business capabilities and value, but that among SSA countries, there are no significant cultural effects of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, or technology culturation. Furthermore, they do not believe that there is any significant interaction between culture and transfer implementation within SSA. I conclude by discussing the findings in light of the existing literature related to e-business in SSA, and by noting implications for management, research and teaching.

Application Services Providers (ASPs) exploit the economics of delivering commercial off-the-shelf software over the Internet to many dispersed users, but the decision-making process to adopt the ASP business model can be complex requiring a comprehensive consideration of various factors. As a new form of outsourcing, the ASP business model differs from traditional outsourcing models with respect to the attributes associated with vendors, clients, and applications. These differences are expected to demand decision models that are distinct from those in the traditional IS outsourcing. In this study, an integrative model for ASP adoption that incorporates economic determinants, strategic determinants, and social determinants is developed. This integrative model includes the individual effects of these determinants, as well as the moderating effects of the social determinants upon the economic and strategic determinants. To test this research model and its associated hypotheses, two self-administered surveys, one among clients of a leading ASP and the other among nationally selected top computer executives, are conducted. The findings from the two surveys show that economic, strategic and social factors impact a clients decision on ASP adoption. Moreover, among prospective ASP adopters, trust had a strong tendency to influence the effect of cost benefits and IT deficiency removal on ASP adoptions. This study empirically examines the determinants of ASP adoption from an integrative perspective. This model contributes to the academic literature by presenting a broad view for understanding ASP adoption decision. The findings from the survey elucidate the independent impact of the economic, social and strategic perspectives as well as interactions among the three perspectives for ASP adoption. For practitioners, this study can shed insight on special determinants in ASP adoption. It can help ASPs gain a better understanding of clients concerns for ASP adoption and make corresponding adjustments in the services in order to attract clients and increase application usage.

One of the most widely used methods in decision-making is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). With its technique of comparing the alternatives by means of a sequence of pairwise comparison matrices, the AHP is both easy to understand and very versatile. This research aims at contributing some insights on this method, in particular, regarding to what is known as the incomplete AHP. The core of this research is to investigate whether the initial comparisons used to extract the data for a multi-criteria decision making problem, will play a role in producing a relatively accurate estimation of the ranking of the alternatives. Three problems are investigated in this work. The first problem is to determine the optimal number of the initial comparisons. As the number of initial comparisons increases, a complete pairwise comparison matrix will more likely be estimated accurately. Consequently, the time required to calculate these initial comparisons will also increase. These conflicting goals will be investigated further in this thesis. The second problem of this research is to determine which initial comparisons should be asked as the starting point. Using the minimal number of initial comparisons (i.e., comparisons), five different strategies will be investigated. Lastly, the final problem is to determine if the method that we use to estimate the missing comparisons will also affect the accuracy of the weight vector. Two methods will be compared in this thesis, namely the Least Squares, and the Geometric Mean methods. In order to determine whether a matrix is accurately estimated, two methods are used to compare the estimated and the original weight vectors. One method is to compare the ranking order of the alternatives, while the other is to compute the average difference between the two vectors. The smaller the average difference, the better the corresponding selection strategy is. Furthermore, the two methodologies will be compared based on their computation requirements. The methodology with less computational time and better accuracy will be considered better than the other. The final results of this thesis will provide more insight into the incomplete AHP in general, thus hopefully providing the decision maker a reliable tool to optimally use this method.

Since their introduction a quarter of a century ago, group decision support systems (GDSS) have evolved from applications designed primarily to support decision making for groups in face-to-face settings, to their growing use for web conferencing, online collaboration, and distributed group decision-making. Indeed, it is only recently that such groupware applications for conducting face-to-face, as well as virtual meetings among dispersed workgroups have achieved mainstream status, as evidenced by Microsofts ubiquitous advertising campaign promoting its Live Meeting electronic meeting systems (EMS) software. As these applications become more widely adopted, issues relating to their effective utilization are becoming increasingly relevant. This research addresses an area of growing interest in the study of group decision support systems, and one which holds promise for improving the effective utilization of advanced information technologies in general: the feasibility of using virtual facilitation (system-directed multi-modal user support) for supporting the GDSS appropriation process and for improving structured group decision-making efficiency and effectiveness. A multi-modal application for automating the GDSS facilitation process is used to compare conventional GDSS-supported groups with groups using virtual facilitation, as well as groups interacting without computerized decision-making support. A hidden-profile task designed to compare GDSS appropriation levels, user satisfaction, and decision-making efficiency and effectiveness is utilized in an experiment employing auditors, accountants, and IT security professionals as participants. The results of the experiment are analyzed and possible directions for future research efforts are discussed.

The Swiss telecommunication market is quite different from the markets in surrounding European countries. The Swiss Market is characterized by a very small number of competitors and relatively high and stable prices. The model in this thesis explains shows how the limited competition enables the mobile telecommunication service providers to keep prices up. This is due to a oligopoly market situation linked to complicated laws that discourage new competitors to join the Swiss market. Later in 2006, the Swiss federal council will pass the new televisor law, which will make it significantly easier to join the Swiss market. This will most likely result in lower prices for Swiss mobile telecommunication users.

The purpose of this study is to observe the performance of three statistical and data mining classification models viz., logistic regression, decision tree and neural network models for different sample sizes and sampling methods on three sets of data. It is a 3 by 2 by 3 by 8 study where each statistical or data mining method has been employed to build a model for each of 8 different sample sizes and two different sampling methods. The effect of sample size on the overall performance of each model against two sets of test data are observed and compared. It is seen that for a given dataset, none of the three methods is found to outperform any other and their performances are comparable. This is in contrast to many of the existing studies as cited in the literature review chapter of this thesis. But the absolute value of prediction accuracy varied between the three datasets indicating that the data distribution and data characteristics play a role in the actual prediction accuracy, especially the ratio of the binary values of the dependent variable in the training dataset and the population. The models built with each of the sample size and sampling method for each method were run on two sets of test data to test whether the prediction accuracy was being replicated. It was found that for each of the cases the prediction accuracy was replicated across the test datasets.