Organizations are attempting to leverage their knowledge resources by employing knowledge management (KM) systems, a key form of which are electronic knowledge repositories (EKRs). A large number of KM initiatives fail due to reluctance of employees to share knowledge through these systems. Motivated by such concerns, this study formulates and tests a theoretical model to explain EKR usage by knowledge contributors. The model employs social exchange theory to identify cost and benefit factors affecting EKR usage, and social capital theory to account for the moderating influence of contextual factors. The model is validated through a large-scale survey of public sector organizations. The results reveal that knowledge self-efficacy and enjoyment in helping others significantly impact EKR usage by knowledge contributors. Contextual factors (generalized trust, pro-sharing norms, and identification) moderate the impact of codification effort, reciprocity, and organizational reward on EKR usage, respectively. It can be seen that extrinsic benefits (reciprocity and organizational reward) impact EKR usage contingent on particular contextual factors whereas the effects of intrinsic benefits (knowledge self-efficacy and enjoyment in helping others) on EKR usage are not moderated by contextual factors. The loss of knowledge power and image do not appear to impact EKR usage by knowledge contributors. Besides contributing to theory building in KM, the results of this study inform KM practice.

Research at the University of Texas at Austin for financial support. Prabhudev Konana

The predominant business model for Web search engines is sponsored search, which generates billions in yearly revenue. But are sponsored links providing online consumers with relevant choices for products and services? We address this and related issues by investigating the relevance of sponsored and nonsponsored links for e-commerce queries on the major search engines. The results show that average relevance ratings for sponsored and nonsponsored links are practically the same, although the relevance ratings for sponsored links are statistically higher. We used 108 ecommerce queries and 8,256 retrieved links for these queries from three major Web search engines: Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. In addition to relevance measures, we qualitatively analyzed the e-commerce queries, deriving five categorizations of underlying information needs. Product-specific queries are the most prevalent (48%). Title (62%) and summary (33%) are the primary basis for evaluating sponsored links with URL a distant third (2%). To gauge the effectiveness of sponsored search campaigns, we analyzed the sponsored links from various viewpoints. It appears that links from organizations with large sponsored search campaigns are more relevant than the average sponsored link. We discuss the implications for Web search engines and sponsored search as a long-term business model and as a mechanism for finding relevant information for searchers.

MIS literature has not addressed the measurement of customer information satisfaction in electronic commerce. Current models for measuring user information satisfaction (UIS) and end-user computing satisfaction (EUCS) are perceived as inapplicable as they are targeted primarily towards either conventional data processing or the end-user computing environment. This study develops a comprehensive model and instrument for measuring customer information satisfaction (CIS) for web sites that market digital products and services. This paper first discusses the concepts and definitions of customer information satisfaction from the literature. We summarize our findings in a theoretical framework. Based on this framework, we develop a measurement instrument to measure customer information satisfaction. The procedures used in generating items, collecting data, and purifying a multiple-item scale are described. We have carefully examined evidences of reliability, content validity, criterion-related validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity by analyzing data from a quota sample of 520 adult respondents. The norms of the instrument are then developed, and the potential applications for practitioners and researchers are explored. Finally, we conclude this study by discussing limitations and potential future research. We hope that our CIS instrument can be used by other researchers to develop and test Internet marketing and EC theories in the future.

Although research indicates communication is important among information systems (IS) staff, users, and managers to ensure successful development projects, the ineffective communication skills of IS staff are often cited as a possible cause of failed IS projects. To develop effective systems, communication between IS users and systems developers is important throughout the development process, and effective communication supports the collaborative process in system development. As found in the IS 2002 model curriculum, IS experts place interpersonal, communication, and team skills as one of four main categories of exit characteristics of IS graduates (Gorgone et al., 2002). Since effective communication among IS project stakeholders is cited as a critical factor of project success, this study identified specific written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills IS staff, IS users, and IS managers perceived to be the most important for IS staff during the systems development process. To investigate the most important communication skills needed by IS staff during the development process, IS staff, IS users, and IS managers who worked on a system development project together were surveyed. Results of the data obtained from the 324 respondents were analyzed in two ways: first, the most important communication skills needed by IS staff were ranked by each

Learning styles are incorporated more and more in e-education, mostly in order to provide adaptivity with respect to the learning styles of students. For identifying learning styles, at the present time questionnaires are widely used. While such questionnaires exist for most learning style models, their validity and reliability is an important issue and has to be investigated to guarantee that the questionnaire really assesses what the learning style theory aims at. In this paper, we focus on the Index of Learning Styles (ILS), a 44-item questionnaire to identify learning styles based on Felder-Silverman learning style model. The aim of this paper is to analyse data gathered from ILS by a data-driven approach in order to investigate relationships within the learning styles. Results, obtained by Multiple Correspondence Analysis and cross-validated by correlation analysis, show the consistent dependencies between some learning styles and lead then to conclude for scarce validity of the ILS questionnaire. Some latent dimensions present in data, that are unexpected, are discussed. Results are then compared with the ones given by literature concerning validity and reliability of the ILS questionnaire. Both the results and the comparisons show the effectiveness of data-driven methods for patterns extraction even when unexpected dependencies are found and the importance of coherence and consistency of mathematical representation of data with respect to the methods selected for effective, precise and accurate modelling.

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This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of the reliability of two commonly used assessment instruments: the 1987 SEI maturity questionnaire and the SPICE v1 capability dimension. The type of reliability that was evaluated is internal consistency. A study of the internal consistency of the 1987 questionnaire was only briefly mentioned in a 1991 article, and the internal consistency of the SPICE v1 capability dimension has not been evaluated thus far. We used two different data sets to evaluate the internal consistency of each instrument. Our results indicate that both assessment instruments are very reliable and also have similar reliability levels. The results are encouraging for users of assessment instruments, and provide a baseline with which to compare subsequent versions of these instruments. 1. Introduction One of the recently developed class of decision making tools for software engineering management is the software process assessment. The scores from such a...

ISO/IEC 15504 is an emerging international standard for software process assessment. It has recently undergone a major change in the rating scale used to measure the capability of processes. The objective of this paper is to present a follow up evaluation of the internal consistency of this process capability scale. Internal consistency is a form of reliability of a subjective measurement instrument. A previous study evaluated the internal consistency of the first version of the ISO/IEC 15504 document set (also known as SPICE version 1). In the current study we evaluate the internal consistency of the second version (also known as ISO/IEC PDTR 15504). Our results indicate that the internal consistency of the capability dimension did not deteriorate, and that it is still sufficiently high for practical purposes. Furthermore, we identify that the capability scale has two dimensions that we termed "Process Implementation" and "Quantitative Process Management". 1. Introduction Over the l...

The electronic learning (e-learning) literature has not addressed the measurement of learner satisfaction with asynchronous elearning systems. Current models for measuring user satisfaction (US) and students’ evaluation of teaching effectiveness (SETE) are perceived as inapplicable as they are targeted primarily towards either organizational information systems or classroom education environment. My study developed a comprehensive model and instrument for measuring learner satisfaction with asynchronous e-learning systems. The procedures used in conceptualizing the survey, generating items, collecting data, and validating the multiple-item scale are described. This study carefully examined evidence of reliability, content validity, criterion-related validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity by analyzing data from a sample of 116 adult respondents. The norms of the instrument were then developed, and the potential applications for practitioners and researchers explored. Finally, this paper discusses limitations of the work. The empirically validated instrument should be useful to other researchers in developing and testing their e-learning theories.