Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Kamal, M. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 27 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-03-2014-0027

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Volume 27, Issue 6.

It gives us great pleasure to welcome our readers to the sixth issue of the 27th volume of Journal Enterprise Information Management, and express our appreciation to all our readers and contributors over the past year.

The sixth issue of volume 27 commences with a research paper by Naim Ahmad, Abid Haleem and Asif Ali Syed, entitled “Study of Reasons for Enterprise Systems adoption among Indian Organizations”. Enterprise systems are large-scale, distributed, highly intricate application software packages that extend across organisations to support business processes, information flows, reporting, and data analytics in multifaceted organisations (Shang and Seddon, 2002; Barker and Frolick, 2003; Xue et al., 2005). The authors argue that organisations must have a sound, realistic and futuristic business case to adopt enterprise systems. Through a comprehensive analysis of the literature, the authors identified the rationale to adopt enterprise systems and estimated their significance within an Indian organisation. The latter is achieved through the data extracted from enterprise systems customer success stories and case studies. Thus, this research aims to identify reasons for enterprise systems adoption, their relevance to the Indian context that represents the test environment. To study the adoption of enterprise systems against an Indian backdrop, the authors employed a confirmatory research design approach. From the 300 Indian cases downloaded from the vendors’ sites and different IT magazines, a total of 288 cases were further investigated to identify the adoption reasons.

Thereafter, we have a survey based research paper by Nick Hajli, Julian Sims and Mohana Shanmugam, entitled “A practical model for e-Commerce adoption in Iran”. In this paper, Mahmood and Julian argue that much of the extant e-Commerce adoption related research within a developing country context is descriptive, and does not have a rigorous theoretical underpinning (e.g. Kshetri, 2007; Datta, 2011). The authors go on to argue that e-Commerce adoption in small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Iran have not been investigated at a large scale. In order to address this literature void, the authors provide an understanding of the existing barriers to e-Commerce adoption in developing countries in the context of SMEs. Moreover, this research attempts to challenge the present interpretation of barriers, relevant literature and e-Commerce adoption models and frameworks in SMEs within developing countries. e-Commerce adoption is an important issue, particularly for the SME sector as these small businesses are one of the greatest changing divisions of e-Commerce (Kaynak et al., 2005). Therefore, this research aims to identify a realistic framework that can be applied in developing countries, i.e. Iran. The study employs a survey based research method to collect data, including e-Commerce adoption models in this area, to propose and validate a new model. The findings demonstrate that e-Commerce adoption barriers in Iran are related to a lack of awareness of the benefits of e-Commerce, as well as organisational issues related to its application. Moreover, this research also demonstrates a significant relationship between organisational readiness and e-Commerce adoption, including a positive relationship between awareness of e-Commerce and its adoption. This research contributes to the theoretical basis of Information Systems (IS) and e-Commerce adoption studies by proposing and testing a pre-adoption model for e-Commerce.

Yogesh Dwivedi, Kawal Kapoor, Niall Piercy, Banita Lal, Vishanth Weerakkody present research entitled “RFID integrated systems in libraries: extending TAM model for empirically examining the use”. The extant research on radio frequency identification (RFID) is fundamentally focused on technical (e.g. Sing et al., 2013), organisational (e.g. Shahzad and Liu, 2012) and implementation (e.g. Irani et al., 2010) aspects. The RFID technology has revolutionised the item identification and tracking system. This technology enables automated identification of products by embedding chips with wireless antennas on objects. Through analysing the extant literature, the author argue that the patron self-check and patron satisfaction are identified as the two most imperative benefits of RFID application in libraries (e.g. Kern, 2004), and yet there are very few studies empirically investigating these two benefits. The existing literature on technology adoption (e.g. Wang et al., 2011) endorses the significance of attaining an understanding of the factors that affect the usage of such systems to promote their use. This research, therefore, aims to provide in-depth understanding of the relevant factors that influence the use of RFID systems in the library context by empirically testing the relevant constructs from the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) model. In order to empirically test the conceptual findings, this research adopts a survey-based approach, whereby online questionnaires were disseminated amongst the target respondents to examine the adoption of the RFID integrated systems in libraries. The paper assesses the role of a set of innovation attributes on the acceptance of RFID integrated systems in libraries.

The above RFID integrated systems research is followed by another survey based research by Naeimeh Elkhani, Sheida Soltani, Mohammad Nazir Ahmad, entitled “The effects of transformational leadership and ERP system self-Efficacy on ERP system usage”. This research paper takes a slight different view of ERP systems by providing the managers with better understanding of how they can use transformational leadership behaviour and skills in motivating and enhancing employees’ self-efficacy in order to achieve ERP system usage success. Despite the significance of ERP systems, Williams and Williams (2007) and Wickramasinghe and Gunawardena (2010) argue that ERP systems implementation is by no means an easy task and poses many challenges to academics and practitioners. It is one of the organisation's critical change processes in information and communication technologies which can lead to significant effects on structures, processes and cultures of an organisation. This research study evaluates the following:

• First, the influences of transformational leadership (TL) on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in TAM; and

• Second, to examine whether the ERP system's self-efficacy can mediate the relationship between TL and TAM.

In analysing the literature, the authors develop a framework in the field of transformational leadership, ERP system self-efficacy and the TAM. In order to examine the proposed hypotheses, the authors selected two Iranian manufacturing organisations as the necessary tool by which to test each hypothesis in the proposed model. The respondents of this empirical research have been involved with ERP systems implementations. For the study, 210 questionnaires were distributed, out of which a total of 160 questionnaires were returned, which made a response rate of 76 percent. However, from these 160 returned questionnaires, a total of 151 usable responses were analysed by using the partial least squares method. One of the key findings indicates that TL can either directly or indirectly influence perceived usefulness via the assimilation of self-efficacy in a positive manner.

Then we have Fatiha Naoui with case study based research, entitled “Customer service in supply chain management: a case study”. Fatiha evaluates the role and effectiveness of customers services in supply chain management (SCM). The ever-changing nature and increasing demands from customers, requires an agile response from companies (including their supply chain partners) that they deal (with). From management perspective, quality of customer service is one of the main sources of competitive advantage (Brockmann, 1999). The objective of this paper is to identify factors influencing the customer service performance within the SCM. In order to test the findings, a qualitative case study based research methodology is employed, conducting 11 semi-structured interviews with professionals, including direct observation as part of a telecommunications network SME in France. The paper adds to our understanding by showing that the human motivation and intellectual capital management are critical success factors in the Alpha SCM case study. It offers a new perspective that customers are among the major actors in the telecommunications market, along with corporate customers and administration involved in implementation or service quality follow-up and telecommunications use. Theoretically, this research contributes at two levels:

• this research attempts to contribute towards SCM literature by considering the importance and quality of customer services; and

• this research also tried to comprehend the complex relationship between customer service and performance, and provide further insight into the relationship between several dimensions in a context of uncertainty.

Following the above case study paper, we have another case study based research paper by Pietro Dolci, Antonio Maçada, and Gerald Grant presenting their research, entitled “IT investment management and Information Technology Portfolio Management (ITPM): Brazilian case studies”. In this paper, Pietro, Antonio and Gerald argue that high IT investment costs need to be justified and ITPM is a valid technique to assist with this. Datz (2003) report that most IT managers are aware that investments for strategic IT are important, but major projects often do not have high strategic value. Thus, the application of ITPM can assist companies in managing IT investments, enabling them to:

• maximise the value of IT investments while minimising the risk;

• provide increased visibility and evaluation into IT spending;

• improve communication and alignment between IT and business leaders;

• provide increased transparency into IT decision-making;

• reduce costs, improve control and facilitate agility; and

• allow planners to schedule resources more efficiently, helping to prioritise the investments.

Despite the significance of ITPM there are few studies examining this technique. In this context, the following question arises:

• How does the use of ITPM help companies to manage their IT investments?

In response to above question, this research analyses companies’ use of ITPM as a support to their management of IT investments. The analysis of ITPM use by the companies investigated three sub-processes of IT investment management: planning, control and evaluation. The empirical research is carried out in Brazil by conducting five case studies (with a pilot study and four other cases) in different large Brazilian companies from several economic sectors. The case study companies were either already using the technique or were in the initial implementation phase of applying the technique. The authors assert that studying companies in Brazil is important as the country is increasing in relevance to the world economy. This is in accordance with the fact that Brazil is experiencing its fastest economic growth in almost two decades, achieving sixth place in global economic ranking in 2011, overtaking the UK.

Thereafter, we have Daniel Gozman and Wendy Currie presenting their research paper, entitled “The role of rules-based compliance systems in the new EU regulatory landscape: perspectives of institutional change”. This research paper provides an understanding on how institutional changes to the EU regulatory landscape may affect corresponding institutionalised operational practices within financial organisations. The extant research highlights how rules and logics may become embedded in IT artefacts (e.g. Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001; Scott, 2003). Building on the view that systems embed and enable institutionalised regulatory through rules and logics, the focus of this study is an investment management system (IMS) which facilitates securities trading and applies automated compliance rules to such trades. Consequently, this paper seeks to answer the following research question:

RQ1. What is the role of IS in enabling different types of institutional change for regulatory compliance?

The study builds on an established body of literature which focuses on forms of institutional change relating to deinstitutionalisation, assimilation and dilution, political struggles and changes in the enactment of institutions, as well as their outcomes (e.g. Seo and Creed, 2002). This study makes a theoretical contribution by investigating the different modes of change, driven by post-crisis regulatory orders occurring at both the field and organisational levels. The study addressed the research question by providing analysis of the role of the IMS in enabling different modes of institutional change, by exploring how such systems are supporting the restructuring of compliance practices as a result emergent post-crisis regulation. The study shows that the new emerging regulatory landscape is causing institutional change at both the field and organisational levels.

Finally, we have Martin Aruldoss, T. Miranda Lakshmi, V. Prasanna Venkatesan with their literature review paper, entitled “A survey on recent research in business intelligence”. This paper argues that there is limited research focused on developing business intelligence evaluation models to evaluate and analyse the performance of business intelligence applications. Another important research scope in business intelligence is to solve the implementation issues in deploying business intelligence applications. The detailed understanding of recent works on business intelligence paves a layout to develop effective business intelligence applications. The authors identified seven different kinds of ongoing research in business intelligence. From the literature survey, it is clear that many business intelligence contributions have focused on the development of business intelligence applications. Despite the huge business intelligence application developments, other research contributions to this area are limited. For instance, the business intelligence models, reference models technological advancements to improve business intelligence analytical capabilities, application of text mining in business intelligence and evaluation methodologies for business intelligence should be given more emphasis and these areas have more research openings. The research opportunities identified through this study can create a stronger business intelligence progression.

We would very much like to thank our contributors for their excellent high quality contributions to this regular issue and hope JEIM readers will find the papers stimulating, original and valuable.

Zahir Irani and Muhammad Kamal

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