The Role of Distribution Channel Agents in Promoting Innovative Activity in Small Retail Businesses: A Case-Study of IT Adoption

The successful application of information technology (IT) offers the retailer, large or small, a decisive source of competitive advantage. Smaller retailers, however, have generally been slow to embrace the new technologies of sales data capture, analysis and communication. Within the distribution channel, four intermediary agents - wholesalers, trade associations, voluntary groups and franchisors - are well-placed to encourage more widespread take-up of IT among small retailers. The role of each agent is examined through the presentation of survey-derived information, and it is suggested that none of these agents has exploited widely this potential to promote innovation adoption. However, the presence of identifiable geographical and organisational clusters of small retailers using IT illustrates the important role being played by some of these agents in promoting IT adoption and indicates ways in which many others could encourage innovative activity.     

Are There Excellent Service Firms,and Do They Perform Well?

While the construct of business excellence, as defined in the very successful hook by Peters and Waterman, had a marked influence on managers in the 1980s, and in all likelihood in the 1990s, it met with some scepticism in academic circles. This was because the construct as conceptualised did not meet the more rigorous requirements of reliability and validity established by critical researchers, and also because many of the so-called excellent firms later showed themselves to be rather ordinary performers at best. Recently, an apparently successful instrument to measure the original Peters and Waterman excellence construct named EXCEL has been developed by Shama et al., in the United States. In this article the authors describe the use of EXCEL in a sample of large UK service firms and comment on its reliability and validity. Links are also established between excellence and overrall business performance in these firms.     

The Influence of Partner Knowledge Complementarities on the Effectiveness of IT Outsourcing

Despite the importance of knowledge complementarities to inter-firm cooperation, few researchers in information systems (IS) have examined, to date, the construct of knowledge complementarities (KC), and none have examined its role in the success of IT outsourcing alliances. In this paper, we distinguish between potential knowledge complementarities (PKC) and synergistic value, which comprise KC. PKC is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing knowledge types (similar and specialized) and knowledge domains (business and IT). Further, we examine the extent to which PKC between the client and the vendor promotes success in IT outsourcing alliances. This research also includes relative absorptive capacity because it is relevant when complementary knowledge flows between organizations. We used data from a field study of 81 firms in Korea to test the proposed model. Our findings indicate that each dimension of PKC contributes uniquely to knowledge complementarities. The results also show that PKC is significantly associated with IT outsourcing effectiveness. Relative absorptive capacity is found to be a moderator between PKC and IT outsourcing effectiveness. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.     

Factors Affecting Information Technology Usage: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature

With an estimated investment of over 1 trillion dollars to date on information technology (IT) products and applications, one would hope that there exists a corresponding improvement in organizational performance and productivity. The level of IT usage has widely been accepted as an important indicator of IT success within organizations. This research synthesizes and validates the construct of IT usage using a meta-analysis. It accomplishes that by analyzing the empirical results of various studies over a period of time covering a broad scope of characteristics of both users and information systems (IS), and it examines the relation between these characteristics and the level of IT usage within organizations. In general, the results of this meta-analysis lead to the conclusion that there exists a strong and significant positive relation between the perception of ease of use and the perceived usefulness of an IT system to the actual amount of usage. Another factor that indicates a high level of IT usage is the organizational support of IT within an enterprise. Although the factors of education level, training level, and professional level were found to have a substantial effect on IT usage, the magnitude of these effects were lower than those of the perceptions of the user and organizational support. Managers and IT professionals may have a better chance of avoiding IT system ineffectiveness and even failure by paying attention to the results of this research, especially in view of the fact that it synthesized and validated the results of a significant number of empirical studies published in some of the best IS journals. Rarely do single research experiments provide definitive answers on which to base policy decisions.     

MODELING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FIRM IT CAPABILITY,COLLABORATION, AND PERFORMANCE

The development and use of information technology (IT) have been thematic in recent literature. IT has been viewed as an enabler of internal and external firm collaboration, which is the foundation of supply chain management. Firm collaboration and information sharing, in turn, are expected to improve firm performance. A model of the relationship between firm IT capability, internal and external collaboration, and firm performance is proposed and tested, using empirical data. The findings show that firm IT capability directly impacts internal and external collaboration as well as firm performance. This finding has important implications for managers as they evaluate investment in information technologies.     

The Effect of Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility on Environmental Performance and Business Competitiveness: The Mediation of Green Information Technology Capital

With the emergence of environmental sustainability and green business management, increasing demands have been made on businesses in the areas of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR). Furthermore, the influence of ECSR on green capital investment, environmental performance, and business competitiveness has also been the subject of attention from enterprises. However, in previous studies, the mediating role of green information technology (IT) capital in the relationship between ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness, has not been investigated by researchers. In order to bridge this gap in the ECSR literature, this study aims to examine the influence of ECSR on green IT capital, and the consequent effect of green IT capital on environmental performance and business competitiveness. Data were collected from 358 companies from the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan. The results confirmed that ECSR has significant positive effects on green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital. Green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have positive effects on environmental performance and business competitiveness, and environmental performance has a positive effect on business competitiveness. In addition, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have partial mediating effects on ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

IT and Coordination Modes: The Case of the Garment Industry in France and US

The aim of this article is to illuminate the relations between information technologies (IT) and modes of coordination among firms. Does IT strengthen existing partnerships, accentuate market volatility or facilitate integration strategies ? Up to what point do the institutional environment and organisational forms favour the diffusion of IT or not? What may be said about the role of IT in the reorganisation of a supply chain ? Through a study of the garment industry we will try to throw light on these subjects, presenting here some preliminary results of our investigations. We first explain previous research and then show the interest of studying the garment industry as a supply chain comparing the two supply chains in France and the United States. The transaction cost perspective will help us to explore how IT affects relationships between companies. In this context the diffusion of electronic networks should be a major stake in rationalising inter-firm coordination modes. But we will see that this stake remains imperfectly strengthened: complex and rich social networks in some crucial stages of the supply chain offer a significant explanation.     

Verifying alternative measures of the service-quality construct: consistencies and contradictions

Abstract

Since the role of service quality for organisational survival and success is of outmost importance, its measurement is still receiving increased attention. SERVQUAL and its alternative measures, namely, SERVPERF, weighted SERVQUAL, and weighted SERVPERF, are the most widespread in the service-quality literature. Yet, research has not concluded regarding the relative superiority of any of these measures. The present study compares all four alternatives within the auto-repair industry in Greece. Based on data from 1043 customers, overall results are in line with previous studies, confirming the multidimensionality of the service-quality construct and the five-factor SERVPERF pattern. In disagreement with previous studies, findings show that the importance-weighted SERVPERF scale provides the greatest diagnostic information. Furthermore, significant variation was found in the predictive validity of the measures.     

The Impact of Outsourcing Strategies on Information Systems Capabilities in the Hotel Industry

This work analyses the strategy of outsourcing information systems and information technology (IS/IT), considering the different activities comprising the IS/IT area. The literature on IS contains numerous works that analyse outsourcing, very few of which examine the relationship with the different types of capabilities in the IS/IT area and their strategic value. Most works centre on the motives for, and advantages of, the strategy of outsourcing the IS/IT area, while scant attention has been paid to the study of the long-term consequences of outsourcing. This work develops a theoretical model which is applied to the hotel sector and which shows that hotels following a more intensive outsourcing strategy develop fewer managerial capabilities related to knowledge in the management of IS/IT resources. This negative relationship extends to other types of capabilities typical of the area and to certain organisational capabilities. A negative relationship is also observed between the level of outsourcing and the strategic value given to the IS/IT area, which may lead to a lower potential for the development of competitive advantage.     

Emotional Information Management: Concept development and measurement in public service announcements

Research on emotion as information in persuasive communication and ad response has created a need for a measure of individual abilities in the management of emotional information. Previous measures (e.g., emotional intelligence measures) lack adequate validity and reliability for use in persuasion and advertising contexts. Four studies iteratively refine a parsimonious Emotional Information Management scale that corresponds to theoretical dimensions of the construct and interrelationships between those dimensions—recognition of emotion, regulatory processes of optimistic utilization and management of emotions, as well as cognitive and emotional empathy. Reliability and construct validity are demonstrated, and scale norms are established. Although gender does not affect recognition of emotions or cognitive empathy, females exhibit greater emotional empathy ability, whereas males exhibit greater emotion regulation ability. Measuring emotional information management should contribute to greater understanding of responses to emotion‐laden or emotion‐eliciting persuasive communication (e.g., public service announcements). ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Do Small and Medium‐Sized IT Firms Form Service Partnerships with Nonlocal IT Firms? An Assessment of Facilitators

For small and medium‐sized information technology firms (IT SMEs), the service partnerships formed with other IT firms are strategic instruments to overcome their resource constraints, increase efficiency, and offer complementary services to their customers. Although these firms have a tendency to form local partnerships due to ease of trust building, few of them are engaged in nonlocal partnerships. This research aims to explore the facilitators of this divergent firm behavior. The findings suggest that a firm's alliance capabilities and organizational proximities between distant partners can substitute the lack of geographical proximity and enable IT SMEs' engagement in nonlocal service partnerships. More importantly, the type of IT service rendered through the partnership acts as a moderator and determines the extent of the organizational capabilities and proximities.     

基于企业工程的商务网络与IT／EIS融合扩展模型研究

针对各类商务网络结构的复杂性和动态性,从系统工程的角度,采用复杂自适应系统对企业商务网络演化的过程进行描述,并基于企业商务网络业务流程对IT／EIS功能需求的拉动机制,枸建一个基于Agent和组件技术的、从商务网络的概念集成一逻辑集成一物理集成的信息技术／企业信息系统（IT／EIS）融合扩展模型,来跟踪信息管理技术新进展,扩展商务网络内外沟通与协调以及按需计算的学习功能,变过去仅仅作为提高工作效率和辅助决策工具的传统IT／EIS平台为现代企业的造血系统和神经系统。这一模型有利于提高企业信息化体系建设的有效性。     

An Alternative Approach to the Measurement of Emotional Attachment

Emotional attachment (EA)—the emotional bond connecting an individual with a specific target—has been identified as an important construct within the marketing domain. Despite all the research, there is no consensus on how the construct should be measured. A major factor contributing to this confusion is that current definitions and, consequently, scales of EA focus on describing reactions toward specific referents of attachment rather than on capturing the extent of emotion an individual feels; hence, hindering construct validity. In this article, the authors scrutinized the concept validity of EA. After defining the construct, scale development procedures were followed to propose an alternative one‐dimensional scale that reflects the abstract nature of EA. Three studies support the scale's reliability as well as the discriminant, convergent, criterion, and nomological validity of the measure. The studies tested the scale under different marketing contexts. Moreover, by employing the new measure, the findings showed that EA and self‐concept maintenance (SCM) are related, yet different constructs. Specifically, the results showed that these constructs interact to predict willingness to pay (WTP) for a brand such that when SCM is low, WTP is predicted by EA. However, when self‐concept is high, the effect of EA on WTP is not that strong. This new scale will help researchers extend research on EA to a broader set of contexts, explore the relationship between EA and related constructs, develop nomological networks, and prevent the confounding of terms.     

Development and validation of the Customer-Centered Behavior measure

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new measure of customer service job performance – the Customer-Centered Behavior (CCB) measure. The CCB measure draws on the content of over 15 existing measures, but captures in-role service performance focused on customer interactions in a multidimensional framework. Three studies were conducted to develop and validate the new measure. Study 1 addresses the item generation process and examines the initial factor structure. Results demonstrate that service behaviors are best represented as a second-order construct composed of three first-order factors – assurance, responsiveness, and recommendation behaviors. Study 2 confirms the factor structure and provides evidence for the measure's predictive validity. Finally, Study 3 provides evidence for incremental validity above other service performance measures.     

Measuring service performance in mobile communications

With the rapid growth in the size of the cellular phone market, performance standards are emerging as the strategic imperative for the service providers in ensuring customer satisfaction. This article develops and validates a psychometrically sound multi-item measure of service performance in mobile communications. A pool of 16 items was developed to cover the hypothesised multiple aspects of service performance and tested using a sample of 120 customers. The construct validity of the multi-aspect service performance measure was evaluated through assessing convergent, discriminant and predictive validity.     

Strategic and organisational determinants of sophistication in deployed sales force automation systems within three industry sectors in the UK

Abstract

This paper investigates strategic and organisational context determinants of the sophistication of adopted sales force automation (SFA) systems in three UK industries: financial services, pharmaceuticals, and building/construction. Sophistication of adopted systems is associated with the organisation placing greater emphasis on information orientation, which is itself driven by an increased integration of IT and sales coupled with increased organisational slack. Increased integration of IT and sales is itself driven by increased strategic importance of sales coupled with increased use of internal communication networks. Importantly, a firm's marketing orientation, although also driven by the strategic importance of sales, has no impact on either information orientation or SFA sophistication. We discuss the implications of our findings to aid understanding of SFA implementation failure.     

Information Technology and Customer Orientation: A Study of Direct,Mediated, and Interactive Linkages

This study investigates whether and how information technology (IT) is linked to a firm's ability to understand and fulfil customer needs, i.e. customer orientation. IT alone or in tandem with other strategic resources may enable businesses to process market intelligence and coordinate organisational responses to meet evolving buyer preferences. Based on a survey of senior marketing managers and PLS path model analyses, we learned that greater IT capabilities are associated with higher customer orientation but in mediated and interactive ways with marketing information quality and organisational trust. These and other findings largely supported the conceptual model. An implication is that while IT capabilities can help firms be more customer-focused, other critical resources must also be present.     

Evaluating the effects of executive learning and development on organisational performance: implications for developing senior manager and executive capabilities

In spite of decades of research into high‐performance work systems, very few studies have examined the relationship between executive learning and development and organisational performance. In an attempt to close this gap, this study explores the effects of a validated four‐dimensional executive learning and development measure on a composite measure of organisational performance. The study is based on ordinal regression analysis with empirical data elicited from 222 executives and senior leaders drawn from a wide geographic region. The theoretical link theoretical between the two variables was established by building on the Activity‐Motivation‐Outcome concept in order to encapsulate human capital, dynamic capability, resource dependency, social exchange and leader‐member‐exchange theories. The study reported an overall positive effect of executive learning and development on firm performance and has significant implications for the effective development of executive and senior management capabilities as a means of improving organisational effectiveness.     

Strategic IMC: From abstract concept to marketing management tool

Although integrated marketing communication (IMC) has progressed towards mid-range maturity level, its full-scale adoption has been impeded by a lack of consensus on its defining constructs. The purpose of this study is to move from abstraction to define the construct of strategic integration (SI) and develop this into a management tool, thus making an important contribution to both the theory and practice of IMC. Drawing from both IMC and strategic management literature, the construct of SI is operationalised into a number of key factors and a well-cited management model, Fuchs' ‘integration valuator’ is explored as the starting point of a measurement tool for IMC. To do this, a Delphi study invites the scrutiny of an expert panel of world-leading IMC researchers and practitioners. The panel validated the model construction process, redefined overarching constructs and key factors with a high degree of consensus, supported a process measure, suggested a weighted evaluation measure and recognised the importance of developing such a measure. They delivered clear and consistent imperatives guiding model development. The result is a measure of SI that evaluates organisational proficiency and diagnoses the integration of IMC campaigns. It also advances theory by providing a better understanding of the construct of SI.     

Internal market orientation and its influence on the satisfaction of contact personnel

To verify the dimensions, reliability and validity of internal market orientation (IMO) as a scale of measurement of internal marketing, and using it to measure the effect of internal marketing on the satisfaction of contact personnel. Interviews were carried out with all the cashiers of the 16 branches of a small, local credit institution. Because of the small sample size, partial least squares were used in the analysis of the data. The results show the validity and reliability of the IMO construct, formed by four of the five dimensions of the original scale. They also corroborate the causal relationships among the four dimensions, as well as the significant influence of the informal dimension of IMO on the satisfaction of contact personnel. The main limitation of this study is that it analyses a single financial entity, with the characteristics and behaviours that the latter has in its relationship with its employees. To achieve their organisational objectives, firms must adopt an orientation towards the employee, or internal marketing, on an equal plane to the traditional consideration of the external market. Also, the measurability of this internal orientation on the basis of the IMO scale makes available a valuable tool of planning and control in its implementation. This article verifies the validity and reliability of the IMO construct, and its influence on the satisfaction of contact personnel, in a different business sector and with a different research subject from those analysed hitherto by the literature. It also demonstrates the sequential type of relationship among the dimensions that form IMO.