Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Irani, A. (2008), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 21 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeim.2008.08821eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Volume 21, Issue 5

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Issue No. 5 Volume 21 of the Journal of Enterprise Information Management. This issue covers a variety of contributions that span the theoretical and practical.

The first paper of this issue is written by Yang and Klassen, and explains that self-serve technologies (SSTs) provide many benefits such as speed, time and place convenience for the customer and reduced labour costs for the firm. The study proposed by the author considers whether these benefits are denoted by changes in the firms’ stock price when SSTs are introduced. Using data from banking, retail (grocery and gas), and airline industries, this event-study considers overall effects of SST implementation on stock price, and also considers effects in three sub-categories: industry, time period, and scope of announcement (i.e. corporate vs. regional). SST announcements had a positive effect on firm value during the late 1990s. However, for the most part, financial markets do not respond to SST announcements. This is in line with the strategic necessity hypothesis and the resource-based view of the firm but may also be partly due to the phased rollouts that are typical of these implementations (which dilute the impact over time). In terms of the practical implications of this study, firms should not promise investors immediate increase in firm value but rather demonstrate the benefits from a longer-term, competitive and customer-oriented perspective. In this, the first study to consider the effect of implementing SSTs using event-study methodology, Yang and Klassen have differentiated the work presented from most prior SST studies, which have considered behavioural aspects of the implementation, while most prior event studies have considered IT implementations (in a general sense), not focusing on a specific technology. Using a new dataset collected from two decades of SST implementations, this study focuses on the impact of SSTs from a different perspective.

Chong presents an interesting paper that explores success in electronic commerce implementation through a cross-country study of small and medium aized enterprises (SMEs). This study proposes a framework of implementation success for SMEs by surveying the perceptions and experiences of the adoption of Internet-based Electronic Commerce (EC). Results of preliminary interviews of small businesses in Australia and Singapore show that respondents’ perceptions of internet-based EC are pre-dominantly positive. A further analysis was carried out regressing overall satisfaction on the 19 influencing factors of EC success. The paper found that five factors – observation, communication channel, customer pressure, supplier pressure, and perceived governmental support make significant contribution to the adoption of internet-based EC in Australia; and only three factors – firm size, perceived readiness, observability have significant impact in Singapore. The discussion provides useful insights to adopters of EC initiatives in both countries.

In Teohs’s and Pan’s paper “Understanding the influences of social integration in enterprise information systems (EIS) use”, an in-depth case study is carried out, where 40 interviews were collected along with eight informal conversations, five observations, and secondary data from a company with ten years of experience in the management and application of EIS. The informants were EIS users from the top management to the middle management, different-user departments, the IT department, as well as the IT vendor. The authors successfully identified six social integration (SI) processes and three SI mechanisms that help to explain the influences of SI in EIS use. By understanding the concept of SI, practitioners should be able to provide appropriate effort, attention and action that could evolve in the process to optimize productivity and efficiency of EIS use. The theoretical contribution of this paper is the development of a coherent conceptual SI framework to connect the interrelationships among the three social capital dimensions proposed earlier in the literature.

Catt, presents a research note, that explores the Theory and Practice of SAPs ERP Forecasting Functionality. The paper seeks to provide a critique of SAP’s ERP (release ECC 6.0) forecasting functionality and offers guidance to SAP practitioners on overcoming some identified limitations. The SAP ERP forecasting functionality is reviewed against prior seminal empirical business forecasting research. The SAP ERP system contains robust forecasting methods (exponential smoothing) but could be substantially improved by incorporating simultaneous forecast comparisons, prediction intervals, seasonal plots and/or autocorrelation charts, linear regressions lines for trend analysis, and event management based on structured judgmental forecasting or intervention analysis. The findings presented in this paper provide guidance to SAP forecasting practitioners for improving forecast accuracy via important forecasting steps outside of the system. The paper contributes to the need for studies of widely adopted ERP systems to critique vendor claims and validate functionality through prior empirical research, while offering insights and guidance to SAP’s 12 million+ worldwide enterprise system practitioners.

Mendling and Hafner explain that the Web Service Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is a specification for describing multi-party collaboration based on Web Services from a global point-of-view. WS-CDL is designed for use in conjunction with the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL or BPEL). As WS-CDL is a new choreography language, there has been doubt about the feasibility of a transformation to BPEL. In their article, the authors show how BPEL process definitions of parties involved in a choreography can be derived from the global WS-CDL model, and what the limitations of such a derivation are. The authors have implemented a prototype of the mappings as a proof of concept. The automatic transformation leverages the quality of software components interacting in the choreography as advocated in the Model Driven Architecture concept. The mapping reveals that some information has to be added manually to the generated BPEL, in particular, choice conditions and private activities. A comprehensive evaluation of WS-CDL with respect to the interaction patterns is still missing. As a resolution to this issue, the authors propose the modelling of choreographies by the help of a more abstract language – in the sense of being more independent of underlying technology – like UML 2.0 Activity diagrams. The core contribution of this paper is to show how BPEL process definitions for parties involved in a choreography can be derived from a global WS-CDL model. The authors have implemented a prototype of the mappings as a proof of concept.

Lemmergaard looks at the Scandinavian Information Systems Development (ISD) approach in contrast to more traditional ISD approaches, this paper reflects on experiences of the roles of the participants in an ISD process. The study demonstrates how the theoretical knowledge of academic researchers together with the pragmatic approach of practitioners can be integrated in the ISD process. Particularly in a new and more refined way, through a heightened awareness of the different roles. Based on a case study approach, the study focuses on the roles of human resource academics and human resource practitioners in an ISD process developing an intra- and inter-organizational web-based knowledge-sharing portal. The study demonstrates that to secure the success of the ISD process, new roles must be performed and properly orchestrated. Also, the study demonstrates how a constant crosschecking of “real-world” experiences against “the laboratory” in the ISD process can benefit the participating partners, the process, and the end product. Based on a single-case study, the context and process imposed constraints. The findings are context specific with implications for the application of findings to other ISD processes. The study highlights the human tasks in a particular ISD process and explains how insights from the Scandinavian and more traditional ISD approaches can be used to enhance the role identification and consequently help address the mediator problem. The study suggests that researchers act as mediators through the fulfillment of the roles, which naturally stem from the Scandinavian Approach and the traditional software engineering approach to ISD.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue, and hope to receive your valuable contributions for the following issue.

Zahir IraniEditor, (Zahir.irani@brunel.ac.uk)

Ahmad IraniEditorial Assistant