Sample
Research Projects:
A Comparative
Study of End User Computing Performance for Different Data Models and
Languages
IS Implementation Issues in China
Information Shared Postponement Strategies in Supply Chain Management
Enterprise
Systems: A Knowledge Integration Perspective
Neural
Networks for Drug Design
Consumer
Search for an Online Vender
E-government Systems in Developing Nations from the Socio Technical Perspective
A Study of Open Source Success
The Role of Power Distance in Determining the Effectiveness of Educational Technology
Conceptual and Empirical Investigations on e-Negotiations/Negotiation Support Systems
A Comparative Study of End User Computing Performance for
Different Data Models and Languages
(for more information, contact: Xiao
Hua ZENG, Hock Hai TEO or Hock Chuan
CHAN)
Previous research shows that data models and query languages based on higher level abstraction have a significant impact on user performance in such tasks as modeling building, query writing and comprehension. In this study, we further investigate the interaction between the users' modeling building performance in relating to their query writing and comprehension. In a laboratory experiment, 74 student subjects were randomly assigned to three different groups, named, relational data model, EER model and OO model. We build a structural equation model to test the path coefficients between constructs. We are seeking managerial insights in enhancing end users' computing performance in enterprises. [Top]
IS Implementation Issues in China
(for more information, contact: Hui Xian LI, John LIM, or K.S. RAMAN)
Owing to the turbulent and fast changing environment in which Chinese firms operate, Computer Information Systems (CIS) implementation triggers important organizational changes in these firms. Starting with the premise that both the depth and nature of such changes are markedly different from what firms experience in other economies, this project involves conceptualizing issues relating to IS implementation in the Chinese context. It investigates critical success factors and expounds on the embedded processes. A case study was conducted which entailed the examination of two key applications, financial accounting and personnel administration. This initial exploration indicates relevance of certain factors in the existing literature, and brings to light the potentiality of several factors pertinent to the current state of the Chinese business environment, which is heavily influenced by the cultural and economic backgrounds of this huge country. The study is the beginning part of a larger research program, which aims to include multiple cases in different but major industries. The findings enrich the literature on IS implementation by offering new dimensions of understanding. [Top]
Information Shared Postponement Strategies in Supply Chain
Management
(for more information, contact:
Cheng ZHANG or Gek Woo TAN)
Postponement strategy is one of the effective strategies to increase a supply chain's responsiveness to increasing product variations and shortening product life cycle. Over time, the scope and application of postponement has expanded to various aspects in the supply chain. This study is to analyze the combined impact of postponement strategy and information sharing strategies in the supply chain management, called information shared postponement strategy, and the relationship between them. The study is carried out via simulation. A simulation system is developed via GPSS to model the supply chain network, including enterprises in the supply chain and their functions in different levels. Partial studies and sensitive analysis are carried out for further understanding of its managerial implication. [Top]
User-database Interaction
(for more information, contact:
Lian XIANG or Hock Chuan
CHAN)
User-database interaction covers the major database tasks, including database design, query writing, database model comprehension and database updates. With the multitude of different database models, query languages, and interfaces available, it is important to develop theories and understandings of how users will perform with these various combinations. Many research studies have been done to empirically assess user performance, based on measurement of query accuracy, modeling correctness, speed and so on. This project concentrates on a empirical evaluation of the fundamental data representations, for the relational and object- oriented models. [Top]
Enterprise Systems: A Knowledge Integration Perspective
(for
more information, contact: Say
Yen TEOH or Shan Ling PAN)
Enterprise systems are commercial software packages that enable the integration of transactions-oriented data and business processes throughout an organization. It functions as organizational infrastructure that supports future value-generation in creating competitive advantages for the organization. However, successful adoption and operation of an enterprise system does not come easily because of various problems. Knowledge integration is one of the key problems in enterprise systems. Hence, it is worthwhile for further investigation to close the research gap in this area. [Top]
Internet Privacy
(for more information, contact:
Qiu Hong WANG or Kai Lung
HUI)
An increasing number of
Internet businesses are seeking consumer information in order to target their
products or services at the right consumers. To overcome information privacy -
the desire of consumers to control the disclosure and subsequent use of personal
information - Internet businesses need to motivate consumers to voluntarily
disclose their personal information. This project studies factors (both
motivating and deterring) that affect consumers' information privacy
preferences. [Top]
Neural Networks for Drug Design
(for more information,
contact: Singh
Wasan PAVANDIP, Rudy SETIONO or Chee Wee
LEE
The project undertaken will involve the design of a neural network model to better characterize the 3D and physico-chemical correlation between protein active sites and their respective binding ligands. Specific focus for this project is placed on the design of ligands to react with enzymes which occur along the flavonoid biochemical pathway. Tests will be carried out in-silico, in-vitro and in-vivo to provide feedback data on the structural and physico-chemical properties chosen as input to the neural network based on a supervised training model. This project aims to better identify the properties within the microstructure of protein active sites and their associative binding ligands which contribute to their binding affinity. [Top]
Consumer Search for an Online Vender
(for more information,
contact: Shun CAI or Calvin
XU)
Online consumer behavior is
still not well understood in the E-Commerce context. Among the online consumer
behavior research issues, one specific topic is what affects a consumer’s vender
search behavior. From the marketing literature, it is known that the search ends
when the searching cost exceeds the searching benefit. However, it is still not
clear what are the benefits and costs in the online environment. A review in
marketing literature reveals that these factors can include market environment
(e.g. number of alternatives, store characteristics), situational variables
(e.g. time pressure, financial pressure), potential payoff (e.g. better price),
knowledge and experience (e.g. store knowledge, product experience), individual
traits (e.g. ability, education), and cost of search (Beatty and Smith 1987).
However, these factors were identified in the offline environment for general
information search purpose. It is arguable that some of these factors will still
remain important in the online environment. Moreover, new factors may come in
and play a role in the search task. Among those new factors, for example, the
trustworthiness of a company can be very important (McKnight et al. 2002).
Similarly, the design of a web site can also affect the search behavior. The
purpose of this research is to find out the factors that affect a buyer’s online
search behavior and to offer a theoretical explanation as well. [Top]
ERP in China
(for more information, contact: Xin
Xin CHEN or Shan Ling PAN)
ERP has been a buzzword for a few years in China, the implementation of which, however, is still far from satisfactory. While Western enterprises have successes and failures in their implementation experiences, implementing ERP in Chinese organizations is not as straightforward as managing it in well-developed Western organizations. In particular, a number of problems contribute to the low success rate of ERP implementation in China. Given the complexity and complication of those problems, adopters cannot just simply pick up critical success factors from the West and implement them accordingly. Adjustments and adaptations are needed. The purpose of this research is to find out these issues and hopefully to come up with some innovative ideas in helping Chinese organizations to better implement enterprise systems. [Top]
E-government Systems in Developing Nations from the Socio
Technical Perspective
(for more information, contact: R. B.
VENKATARAYAPPA, Hee Woong KIM or K.S.
RAMAN)
The perception of using Information Technology in the public administration around the world irrespective of developed or developing nations at state, federal, district level levels is spreading at a rapid phase. The information technology has been used for delivering efficient services to the citizens. One of the developing nations, India is also marching towards in this direction. With this context this project aims to study the associated factors for implementation and success of IT enabled e-government system the “e-Seva” from the inception to the current stage from the perspective of socio technical system in Andhra Pradesh in south Indian. [Top]
Towards a Better Design of VPE Technology: The Effect of VPE Forms and Task Compatibility on Shopping Performance and Experience
(for more information, contact: Cheng YI or Jack JIANG)
Internet has emerged as a major advertising and education medium. Firms allow consumers to manipulate product images on the websites in order to provide them with virtual product experience. However, there are still questions about whether this experience can provide positive response outcomes, especially given its cost. This study examines a design concept called event-triggering VPE and compares it with standard process-based VPE as well as video presentations for different product features. We are seeking theoretical and practical insights in understanding web-consumer interaction and effective applications of VPE technology. [Top]
A Study of Open Source Success
(for more information, contact: Jing WU or Candy TANG)
Recent years have seen a rapid growth of open source software (OSS). Although a few projects, such as GNU, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, have achieved extraordinary success, there are many projects which are lackluster with no active developing activities. To deepen our understanding of the OSS, it is essential to explore the factors that have contributed to its success or failure. This project explores factors that could influence the success or failure of the open source projects. We examine open source success through the social network perspective. We seek to provide insights to the questions of whether the success of open source projects is correlated to the social structure of the development teams, i.e., the communication pattern of the project team; and what is the impact of communication pattern on the success of open source projects. [Top]
Economics of Information Security - Measuring the Impact of Government Enforcement on Hackers’ Behaviors Using Event Study Analysis
(For more information, please contact: Chen Yu WANG or Ivan PNG)
Information security deals with the protection or preservation of six key aspects of information, namely, confidentiality, integrity, availability (CIA), authenticity, accountability, and non-repudiation. Considering organizations’ ever-increasing dependence on information systems for operational, strategic, and e-commerce activities, protecting information systems against potential threats to the organization has become a major concern for governmental policy as well as business corporations. In this paper, a thorough literature review of information security background, barriers to sound information security, and traditional measures to address information security are presented to serve as a solid foundation for further researches. The pros and cons of each method introduced are analyzed. Besides, this paper makes a meaningful attempt to investigate the effect of government enforcement on hackers’ behaviors using event study methodology. In addition, panel data estimation (specifically, the fixed effects model) is also employed to further illustrate the results given by the event study analysis. Our results demonstrate that government enforcement has a significantly negative and deterrent impact against hackers’ behaviors by dramatically reducing the number of security attacks committed either for an individual country or at a global level. It complements the existing body of research in the realm of information security by incorporating an important variable - government enforcement - and contributes, to some degree, to the establishment of a more sophisticated model of information security. In addition, our results also provide valuable policy as well as economic implications. [Top]
The Role of Power Distance in Determining the Effectiveness of Educational Technology
(for more information, contact: Elizabeth KOH or John LIM)
Educational technology is being deployed rapidly all over the world. Correspondingly, there is also an increase in student collaboration from different cultural backgrounds through diversified student populations, institutionalized programs and distance learning. The cultural background of students is thus important in IT and education today. This research project intends to examine the effectiveness of educational technology by focusing on the dimension of power distance (Hofstede 1980). Power distance is very relevant to learning outcomes. We postulate that power distance is a moderating influence on the relationship between educational technology and learning outcomes. In particular, the availability of educational technology increases learning outcomes but the effect will be greater on low power distance learners than on high power distance learners. The research involves both qualitative and quantitative methodology. It aims to accumulate in a body of work that seeks to improve the quality of education for students from high and low power distance cultures. [Top]
Conceptual and Empirical Investigations on e-Negotiations/Negotiation Support Systems
(for more information, contact: Yin Ping YANG or John LIM))
Over the past three decades, there has been an increasing, evident interest in applying computer-based technologies to solve negotiation problems; this field of research is known as Negotiation Support Systems (NSS). Our research program on NSS demonstrates longitudinal efforts in theoretical and empirical investigations, aiming toward a comprehensive understanding of negotiation support in the business domain. The cumulative research work involves two facets of the complexity with regard to computer-based negotiations: the different technological configurations and social complications. The research consists of a set of works on NSS theory development, which address various dimensions resulting from the interplay between the said facets. The following important areas are looked into: theoretical and conceptual work in NSS; technological features of NSS (multilingual support, pre-negotiation preparation, process mediation, videoconferencing and use of autonomous negotiation agents): the design, implementation and empirical examinations; human factors of NSS (dynamics of NSS effects arising from gender, culture, languages and group coalition); and adoption of NSS in organizations, which is related to the roles and contributions of NSS/e-negotiations in electronic marketplaces. [Top]