Journal of Systems and Information Technology

Abuhussein, Ruba; Alawneh, Afnan; Al-Debeie, Mutaz ; Hiyassat, Mohammed; Sweis, Rateb J

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-03-2016-0020

PurposeThis research is conducted to investigate the project management factors that are affecting the ERP projects’ performance in Jordan. Based on the conducted literature review, four project management areas were selected for this research; the communication management, the human resource management, the time management and the risk management.Design/methodology/approachTwenty four Jordanian ERP projects were surveyed through designing a questionnaire that was distributed to project managers. Moreover, interviews were conducted with both the project manager of the largest ERP project in Jordan and a consultant of one of the Big-Five consulting firms.FindingsThe interviews’ result confirmed the effect of the four project management areas on the ERP project performance which is consistent with the questionnaire results except for the risk management.Originality/valueNo similar studies were found in Jordan. Moreover, this subject was tackled by only a few studies, so more research is recommended to investigate the project management factors that are affecting the ERP projects’ performance. It is also recommended that future studies extend this research on factors other than project management factors.

Sykora, Martin

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-03-2016-0019

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore implicit crowdsourcing, leveraging social media in real-time scenarios for intelligent systems.Design/methodology/approachA case study using an illustrative example system, which systematically employed a custom social media platform for automated financial news analysis and summarisation was developed, evaluated and discussed. Literature review related to crowdsourcing and collective intelligence in intelligent systems was also conducted to provide context and to further explore the case study.FindingsIt was shown how, and that useful intelligent systems can be constructed from appropriately engineered custom social media platforms which are integrated with intelligent automated processes. A recent inter-rater agreement measure for evaluating quality of implicit crowd contributions was also explored and found to be of value.Practical implicationsThis paper argues that when social media platforms are closely integrated with other automated processes into a single system, this may provide a highly worthwhile online and real-time approach to intelligent systems through implicit crowdsourcing. Key practical issues, such as achieving high quality crowd contributions, challenges of efficient workflows and real-time crowd integration into intelligent systems were discussed. Important ethical and related considerations were also covered.Originality/valueA contribution to existing theory was made by proposing how social media web platforms may benefit crowdsourcing. As opposed to traditional crowdsourcing platforms, the presented approach and example system has a set of social elements that encourages implicit crowdsourcing. Instances of crowdsourcing with existing social media, such as Twitter, often also called crowd piggybacking have been used in the past; however, employing an entirely custom-built social media system for implicit crowdsourcing is relatively novel and has several advantages. Some of the discussion in context of intelligent systems construction are novel and contribute to the existing body of literature in this field.

Stocker, Alexander; Müller, Johannes

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-03-2016-0021

PurposeTo measure the success of Corporate Social Software, interviews, surveys, content and usage data analysis have been commonly used in practice. While interviews and surveys are only capable of making perceived use and benefits transparent, usage data analysis reveals many objective facts but does not allow insights into potential user-benefits. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to link both perspectives to advance Corporate Social Software success measuring. Design/methodology/approachThe research case is -anonymized name of CSS-, a Corporate Social Software developed at -anonymized-company- to facilitate worldwide sharing of knowledge, experiences, and best practices since 2005. -anonymized name of CSS- has currently more than 13,000 registered members located in more than 80 countries. This paper evaluates results from a user survey with nearly 1,500 responding employees and links all survey results to the corresponding participant’s data on platform use to generate additional insights.FindingsThe paper generates findings on how Corporate Social Software is used in practice and how it is perceived by employees of a large-scale enterprise. Furthermore, it explores how a combination of subjective and objective evaluation methods can be applied to advance the state-of-the-art in measuring use and benefits. By linking Corporate Social Software usage data to corresponding survey data, the paper provides results on what type of use of a Corporate Social Software may create what type of benefit. Practical implicationsThis study encourages practitioners to take advantage of a variety of instruments for measuring the benefits of Corporate Social Software. It generates numerous arguments for practitioners on how to make the benefit of Corporate Social Software more transparent to financial-oriented decision makers to successfully defend knowledge management projects against shrinking IT budgets. Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first attempts to explore the relationship between ‘perceived use’ and ‘perceived benefits’ measured by surveys and ‘factual use’ measured by Corporate Social Software usage statistics for knowledge management research. The findings of this paper may empower the role of user surveys in generating additional insights on use and benefits.

Mohammed, Fathey; Ibrahim, Othman; Ithnin, Norafida

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-01-2016-0001

PurposeThis paper aims to develop a model and measurement to investigate the factors influencing cloud computing adoption as a part of developing countries alternatives to implement e-government services.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes a theoretical model based on the literature of technology adoption models. It constructs scale measurements for the proposed model constructs by extracting and adapting the items from the literature. The authors verify the scales’ content validity and reliability by applying face validity, pre-testing and pilot study. For the pilot study, the authors collect the data from 26 IT staff in five public organizations in Yemen. The authors test the reliability of the scales using Cronbach’s Alpha criterion, then they conduct Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to evaluate the validity of the scales.FindingsThe results show that the scale measurements meet the conventional criteria of reliability and validity.Originality/valueTheoretically, this paper provides an integrated model for examining cloud computing adoption for e-government implementation in developing countries. In addition, it develops an instrument to empirically investigate the influencing factors of cloud computing adoption in the context of developing countries e-government initiatives.