Flowers For The World: Developing a Business Game to Support the Teaching of IS Concepts

One of the key problems in teaching fundamental concepts in information systems is how to ground the theory in experiences that the students can relate to. To overcome this problem, a business game called Flowers For The World has been developed and used across a wide variety of IS courses. This paper will describe the game and the result of using it for a 300-level course in analysis and design. The possibility exists that the game could be developed to provide a common business foundation across all business school curricula

Understanding the Influence of Blog on the Development of Social Capital

The rapid use and application of blogs in diverse areas such as education, marketing, journalism, and human resource management in recent years underlines the need for a better understanding of the impact of this new technology on social capital. Social capital reflects the norm of reciprocity and the level of trust among individuals who connect, interact, and benefit from one another. Blog is expected to influence the extent and the scope of this interaction by providing new means of networking among people. This paper examines the relationship between blog use and social capital and reports on the results of an exploratory study that examines this relationship using survey data from 326 blog users. Results suggest a significant and positive impact of blog use on social capital and its components: social connections, reciprocity, and trust. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed

Clarifying the Use of Formative Measurement in the IS Discipline: The Case of Computer Self-Efficacy

The article offers insights on the use of formative measurement in the information system (IS) discipline. It focuses on the comment which warns researchers on the pitfalls of misapplying formative measures in information system domain as well as on the issues related to computer self-efficacy (CSE) and formative measurement. It then asserts that formative indicator weights are sued in determining the conceptual meaning of constructs and notes that the conceptual definition of CSE will likely differ as they are used in different research models and contexts

Management of Change to Ensure IS Success: A Longitudinal Study

This paper aims to understand the effect of management of change on the success of information system (IS) implementation. Drawing on change management research and self-determination theory, a research model is developed. Data collected from a longitudinal field survey before, during, and after an enterprise-wide IS implementation are analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that management of change can be used to increase readiness for change and end-user computing satisfaction during and after the implementation. Readiness for change positively impacts satisfaction during an implementation but not after. Contrary to the literature, No significant relationship exists between resistance to change and satisfaction. The paper contributes to IS research and practice by drawing attention to the importance of management of change and readiness for change for IS success

Formative versus reflective measurement: Comment on Marakas, Johnson, and Clay (2007)

In a recent issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Marakas, Johnson, and Clay (2007) presented an interesting and important discussion on formative versus reflective measurement, specifically related to the measurement of the computer self-efficacy (CSE) construct. However, we believe their recommendation to measure CSE constructs using formative indicators merits additional dialogue before being adopted by researchers. In the current study we discuss why the substantive theory underlying the CSE construct suggests that it is best measured using reflective indicators. We then provide empirical evidence demonstrating how the misspecification of existing CSE measures as formative can result in unstable estimates across varying endogenous variables and research contexts. Specifically, we demonstrate how formative indicator weights are dependent on the endogenous variable used to estimate them. Given that the strength of formative indicator weights is one metric used for determining indicator retention, and adding or dropping formative indicators can result in changes in the conceptual meaning of a construct, the use of formative measurement can result in the retention of different indicators and ultimately the measurement of different concepts across studies. As a result, the comparison of findings across studies over time becomes conceptually problematic and compromises our ability to replicate and extend research in a particular domain. We discuss not only the consequences of using formative versus reflective measures in CSE research but also the broader implications this choice has on research in other domains