• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
The project management (PM) paradigm has changed during the past decade due to the globalization of business and advancement of information technology (IT). Increasingly, projects involve members from different geographical locations more than at any other time in history. Traditional PM methods may be inadequate to manage distributed projects, and new information systems are needed to support distributed PM. This article provides the rationale for a collaborative PM approach to manage distributed projects and proposes a conceptual framework for the collaborative PM software development. The objective is to present a collaborative PM framework that can guide further research and development in this challenging area.

Collaborative Project Management (CPM), Project Process Management, Collaborative Project Management Software, Distributed Projects

Abstract:
The status and maturity of electronic commerce customer relationship management ECCRM), an emerging subfield of management information systems(MIS), are investigated through an exhaustive literature review of 369 articles from the first published article in 1984 through conference papers given in 2001 and 2002. The results indicate some trends that should be of interest and concern to researchers in this area and in MIS as a whole. First, exploratory surveys dominate the research literature, which in itself may be problematic. More troubling, most of the survey instruments were not validated, and the authors did not mention validation procedures. Second, there has been little theoretical development, and few empirical studies use hypothesis testing. Third, cumulative tradition has hardly emerged, with each study developing a new conceptual model, new constructs, and new instruments. On the positive side, ECCRM researchers have employed a wide range of methods and studied a broad range of topics. The subfield of ECCRM is young, but is growing rapidly, and professional activity in the MIS research community illustrates its importance. Specific recommendations for further development are provided.

Electronic commerce customer relationship management, epistemology in MIS research, introspective study, MIS journals and conferences

Abstract:
Companies increasingly employ the World Wide Web to gather information from and disseminate information to actual and potential customers and for end-consumer business transactions and interactions. The challenge of attracting and keeping economically valuable customers while repelling and eliminating those who are not economically valuable is the focus of Electronic Commerce Customer Relationship Management (ECCRM). Many companies consider traditional usability when designing customer-oriented aspects of their Web sites, but they may not consider the critically important aspect of accessibility. On-line barriers may limit or preclude Web accessibility for potential customers with access challenges. ECCRM requires that companies communicate with current and potential customers to establish, develop, and manage relationships. However, this may be difficult or impossible for customers unable to access the company's Web site for information, let alone to place orders or interact with company representatives. Web site accessibility is an important aspect of usability for ECCRM that is being overlooked by most firms.

This article describes the background of Web site accessibility from economic, market-oriented, legal, and usability perspectives. Then it presents the results of an evaluation of the accessibility of the top 250 2002 Fortune 500 company Web site home pages (actually, as will be explained below, there only 248 home pages were evaluated). The Bobby accessibility validation program quantified the number and severity of accessibility errors and problems for each site. The majority (182/247, i.e., 75%) of the Fortune 250 Company Web sites have Priority 1 accessibility errors, and many of these problems are so severe that the firms should give a high priority to correcting them. The study illustrates the need for companies to go beyond traditional usability testing to examine the accessibility of their Web sites so that they can successfully employ ECCRM and comply with ADA and other legal guidelines and requirements. The economic aspects of ECCRM should be enough to encourage firms to make their sites accessible to all current and potential customers. Suggestions for improving the accessibility of Web sites are provided as well as future research directions.

Access challenges, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Center for Assistive Technologies (CAST), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fortune 250, Web site accessibility

Abstract:
This article describes the need for virtual workspaces and then discusses the architecture, design, and development of GroupSystems for the World Wide Web (Web) (GSWeb), an HTML / JavaScript Web-based Group Support System (GSS). To design and develop GSWeb,a user-driven approach was employed which drew on feedback from users and teams working with a GSWeb prototype, interviews with GSS users and facilitators, and over 10 years of experience with face-to-face group support research, development, and design. GSWeb was built using HTML 3.0 and JavaScript for client interface rendering. The result is an application interface that is like the familiar Graphical User Interface (GUI) interfaces that are today a defacto standard. GSWeb is currently being used by teams from all over the world, and continuing design and development still relies on feedback and requests from actual users to refine and extend the features that will enable virtual teams to be productive and accomplish real work.

Abstract:
Information Systems (IS) are increasingly being deployed across multiple departments, organizations, countries and world regions. Consequently, the quality of technical and non-technical integration of various IS modules is highly related to the tangible outcomes and, therefore, to the firm performance. In spite of the importance of the topic, not many research projects specifically focusing on cross-organizational and cross-border collaboration are reported. Thus, the context of this mini-track is the integration of people, systems, processes and infrastructure across organizations, borders, nations and world regions to enable productive teamwork toward accomplishing mutual goals.

collaboration, non-technical integration, system integration, technical integration

Abstract:
Technology-supported small group interaction continues to be a growing area of interdisciplinary research in fields such as information systems (IS), human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-mediated communication (CMC), social psychology, communication, management, organizational behavior, and so on. Group Research is one of the largest areas of study found in conference proceedings and top journals in these areas. In fact, Small Group Research (SGR) has published many papers on the topic during the past two decades, including a special issue on Group Support Systems(GSS) in 1993 (Jessup & Valacich, 1993).

Fjermestad and Hiltz's (1998-1999) detailed analysis of GSS experimental research found that SGR published at least 28 articles on the topic between 1992 and 2000, which comprise greater than 10% of the total 222 articles in their study. We found an additional 8 articles not covered in their study, revealing a total of 36 SGR articles on the topic during this time period. Figure 1 graphically depicts the dispersion of articles published by SGR during this period (see Appendix A for a complete list).

Currently, a follow-up study is being conducted that examines GSS experimental articles published between 2001 and 2006; this study has already found more than 150 articles on our topic, of which approximately 23% were published in SGR (Fjermestad & Romano, 2006). Figure 2 graphically depicts the dispersion of articles published by SGR from 2001 up to and including this special issue (see Appendix B).

collaboration, small groups, virtual teams

Abstract:
Project groups are becoming a mainstay in today's work environment. This trend, coupled with globalization, has virtualized many teams, and has made communication among group members vital to project success. This study evaluates the impact of varying group size and social presence on small-group communication. It compares key communication factors for three different treatments: face-to-face (FtF) without computer-mediated communication (CMC) support, FtF with CMC support, and virtual with CMC support. This study also evaluates these impacts on two different small group sizes (3 and 6). The results indicate that smaller groups establish and maintain higher levels of communication quality. In addition, the results indicate that FtF with CMC support groups had higher levels of communication quality than virtual with CMC support groups; however, we did not find a significant difference between traditional FtF groups and virtual groups with CMC support. Another major finding is that CMC minimized the impact of increased group size. It appears that the process losses a larger FtF group might ordinarily experience can be reduced through the use of CMC. These results should help project managers plan for and deal with the difficulty of communication between project group members in virtual environments.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC), small-group communication, virtual teams, social presence, social presence theory (SPT), and heuristic evaluation (HE)

Abstract:
Audience Response Systems (ARS) are a technologies that show promise in helping large groups or classrooms be more effective. We explore the phenomenon of large-group process interactivity in interpersonal computer-mediated communication in the specific case of large classrooms. We develop a general theoretical model of interactive media and then extend it to ARS and develop testable hypotheses regarding how interactivity affects, efficiency, communication quality, status effects and both process and outcome satisfaction in large classrooms. We then present the method and results of a theory-driven quasi-experiment comparing a classroom using ARS to a traditional classroom across two academic quarters. The results reveal that ARS when applied to a large classroom has several advantages over a traditional lecture format of instruction.

ARS, audience response systems, large classrooms, education, interactivity, communication, status effects, satisfaction, active learning

Abstract:
This paper proposes a new systems development methodology entitled heuristic dataflow diagrams (HDFDs). HDFD leverages group support systems (GSS) and heuristics to improve the creation of DFDs, which are frequently used design artifacts in systems development. We propose theory-based hypotheses to predict likely outcomes of using HDFD in non-GSS groups, GSS groups, and distributed GSS groups. These hypotheses were tested in a laboratory experiment using 123 subjects. The results indicate that HDFD performed with GSS provides process gains over HDFD performed without GSS. Further, distributed groups using GSS and HDFD are able to be as effective as face-to-face (FtF) GSS groups. Our GSS-based methodology of HDFD can be embraced by practitioners to improve the creation of DFDs in FtF and distributed teams and it can likely also be extended to other systems design methodologies, such as structured walkthroughs, entity-relationship diagrams, use cases, and sequence diagrams.

Heuristic evaluation, HFDF, GSS, collaborative software, distributed groups

Abstract:
Process satisfaction is one important determinant of workgroup collaborative system adoption, continuance, and performance. We explicate the computer-mediated communication (CMC) interactivity model (CMCIM) to explain and predict how interactivity enhances communication quality that results in increased process satisfaction in CMC-supported workgroups. We operationalize this model in the challenging context of very large groups using extremely lean CMC. We tested it with a rigorous field experiment and analyzed the results with the latest structural equation-modeling techniques. Interactivity and communication quality dramatically improved for very large groups using highly lean CMC (audience response systems) over face-to-face (FtF) groups. Moreover, CMC groups had fewer negative status effects and higher process satisfaction than FtF groups. The practical applications of lean CMC rival theoretical ones in importance because lean CMC is relatively inexpensive and requires minimal training and support compared to other media. The results may aid large global workgroup continuance, satisfaction, and performance in systems, product and strategy development, and other processes in which status effects and communication issues regularly have negative influences on outcomes.

Ultra-lean interactive media (ULIM), Audience response systems (ARS), Human Computer Interaction (HCI), collaboration, large groups, interactivity, ultra-lean interactivity, CMC Interactivity Model (CMCIM)