Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 23 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeim.2010.08823eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Volume 23, Issue 5

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to volume 23, issue 5, of Journal of Enterprise Information Management. This issue covers a variety of contributions that span the theoretical and practical.

This issue of JEIM starts with a viewpoint article from Drs Kirsten Rosacker and Robert Rosacker. In their piece, they explore information technology projects within the public sector. In doing so, they shed light on public sector projects rather than private sector projects, which monopolise the literature. The article identifies those critical features associated with public sector projects so that a greater understanding of associated idiosyncrasies can be raised.

The second paper is by Vrana and Zafiropoulos, entitled “Locating central travelers’ groups in travel blogs’ social networks”. The paper, using Travelpod.com, aims to provide a methodology to locate central groups of travellers and to describe pattern characteristics of central travellers. The paper uses snowball sampling to locate travellers and analyse their hyperlink interconnections to identify central travellers’ groups. Analysis of the adjacency matrix of the social network of travellers using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to identify core travellers’ groups follows. Seven percent of travellers are considered central travellers. They form core groups containing the most active and information providing travellers. Group membership is correlated with common travelers’ characteristics. In this paper, the research is limited to a specific network of travellers, to a specific time interval, and to a specific sampling method. Repetition of the study in other travellers’ networks in several time instances using a full list of member travellers would help to generalise the findings. Also other graph theoretic approaches, besides the statistical analysis used, could reveal more properties. The originality of the paper lies in the use of multivariate statistics on the network adjacency matrix to locate core travellers’ groups and in finding groups of the most influential travellers.

Then, an empirical study on the influences on the acquisition of enterprise software decisions are presented by Palanisamy, Verville, Bernadas and Taskin. In their paper, they focus on identifying the significant influences on enterprise software acquisition decisions. Influences on enterprise software acquisition decision processes were found through an empirical study and carried out from a practitioner’s perspective. The study collected data via a survey administered to information systems (IS) professionals involved in the acquisition of an enterprise software (ES). The survey questionnaire was developed based on a previous research project and literature review. Organisational buying behaviour (OBB) models in the literature served as the basis for the influences included in the survey instrument. Factor analysis was carried out on the survey data to identify the most significant factors/influences.

Accordingly, the following five factors emerged as significant influences on the acquisition decision process for enterprise software:

1. 1.

   ES strategy and performance;

2. 2.

   BPR and adaptability;

3. 3.

   management commitment and user buy-in;

4. 4.

   single vendor integrated solution; and

5. 5.

   consultants, team location, and vendor’s financing.

These factors are discussed and managerial implications are extracted. Conclusions are derived from the study findings and guidelines for further research are suggested. The study provides a starting point for further research in understanding a more comprehensive list of influences of enterprise software acquisition. A bigger sample from more industries is required to examine whether the significance of the influences remain stable.

Shah and Shah explore employee attitudes and behaviours towards organisational change by using supervisor and peer relations This study explores relationships and the predictive power of supervisor and peer relations and demography in employee readiness for organisational change in a developing country. A questionnaire was developed and 1,000 employees were surveyed, with 556 completed questionnaire forms being returned. Supervisor and peer relations along with demographic factors were examined towards readiness for change. Regression analysis of the data indicated that supervisor and peer relations would be the key determinants of employee readiness for organisational change in a developing country. However, from demographic characteristics only two elements – i.e. the number of dependents and younger employees – have positive and significant relationships with readiness for change. This study contributes to the literature on change management, particularly for developing countries, and assists managers and practitioners of human resources management, organisational behaviour and change agents in assessing, designing and evaluating new or existing programs for organisational change.

Breitsohl, Khammash and Griffiths explore complaint management through the perceptions and perspectives of online credibility. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public online consumer complaint responses from three different perspectives:

1. 1.

   the complainer;

2. 2.

   the company; and

3. 3.

   third-party consumers.

Consumer complaint behaviour and management has been studied in various streams of the literature, yet the processes triggered by a company complaint response have not yet been studied. In particular, this paper departs from examining complaint participants in isolation by recognising the interrelated communication effects of complaint dialogue and public media. Looking at credibility perceptions as a theoretical construct for measuring the utility of a complaint as well as attitude-orientation as an evaluative moderator, this paper aims to highlight the ambiguity of meaning transfer in an online complaint forum. It is hypothesised that credibility and congruence in attitude orientation positively enhance complaint utility perceptions and strongly bias complaint dialogue evaluations.

The expected relevant results for online complaint managers and marketers alike are the inclusion of post-complaint communication into corporate image and relationship management as well as using credibility perceptions as a benchmark for online customer satisfaction and potential positive electronic word-of-mouth.

We end this issue with a final viewpoint from Amir M. Sharif. This viewpoint revitalises and adds to the debate on the rising and declining fortunes of the field of information systems, contrasts and compares this to computer science, and argues for a review within the field of the scientific basis of the field in general.

I do hope you enjoy reading this issue!

Zahir IraniEditor in Chief (Zahir.Irani@brunel.ac.uk)