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This paper empirically examines factors that potentially influence the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. A research model has been proposed that shows the impact of quality-related factors upon the effectiveness of a semantic search engine, based on DeLone and McLean’s(2003) information systems success model. An empirical study has been conducted to test hypotheses formulated around the research model, and statistical methods were applied to analyze gathered data and draw conclusions. Implications for academics and practitioners are offered based on the findings of the study.The proposed model includes three quality dimensions of a Web-based semantic search engine-namely, information quality, system quality and service quality. These three dimensions each have measures designed to collectively assess the respective dimension. The model is intended to examine the relationship between measures of these quality dimensions and measures of two dependent constructs, including individuals’ net benefit and user satisfaction. Individuals’ net benefit was measured by the extent to which the user’s information needs were adequately met, whereas user satisfaction was measured by a combination of the perceived satisfaction with search results and the perceived satisfaction with the overall system. A total of 23 hypotheses have been formulated around the model, and a questionnaire survey has been conducted using a functional semantic search website created by KT and Hakia, so as to collect data to validate the model. Copies of a questionnaire form were handed out in person to 160 research associates and employees working in the area of designing and developing semantic search engines. Those who received the form, 148 respondents returned valid responses. The survey form asked respondents to use the given website to answer questions concerning the system.The results of the empirical study have indicated that, of the three quality dimensions, information quality was found to have the strongest association with the effectiveness of a Web-based semantic search engine. This finding is consistent with the observation in the literature that the aspects of the information quality should serve as a basis for evaluating the search outcomes from a semantic search engine. Measures under the information quality dimension that have a positive effect on informational gratification and user sat-isfaction were found to be recall and currency. Under the system quality dimension, response time and interactivity, were positively related to informational gratification. On the other hand, only one measure under the service quality dimension, reliability was found to have a positive relationship with user satisfaction. The results were based on the seven hypotheses that have been accepted. One may wonder why 15 out of the 23 hypotheses have been rejected and question the theoretical soundness of the model. However, the correlations between independent variables and dependent variables came out to be fairly high. This suggests that the structural equation model yielded results inconsistent with those of coefficient analysis, because the structural equation model intends to examine the relationship among independent variables as well as the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. The findings offer some useful implications for owners of a semantic search engine, as far as the design and maintenance of the website is concerned. First, the system should be designed to respond to the user's query as fast as possible. Also it should be designed to support the search process by recommending, revising, and choosing a search query, so as to maximize users’ interactions with the system. Second, the system should present search results with maximum recall and currency to effectively meet the users’ expectations. Third, it should be capable of providing online services in a reliable and trustworthy manner. Finally, effective increase in user satisfaction requires the improvement of quality factors associated with a semantic search engine, which would in turn help increase the informational gratification for users.The proposed model can serve as a useful framework for measuring the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. Applying the search engine success framework to the measurement of search engine effective-ness has the potential to provide an outline of what areas of a semantic search engine needs improvement, in order to better meet information needs of users. Further research will be needed to make this idea a reality.

Internet computing is a disruptive IT innovation. Semantic Web can be considered as an IT innovation because the Semantic Web technology possesses the potential to reduce information overload and enable semantic integration, using capabilities such as semantics and machine-processability.How should organizations adopt the Semantic Web? What factors affect the adoption and diffusion of Semantic Web innovation? Most studies on adoption and diffusion of innovation use empirical analysis as a quantitative research methodology in the post-implementation stage. There is criticism that the positivist requiring theoretical rigor can sacrifice relevance to practice. Rapid advances in technology require studies relevant to practice. In particular, it is realistically impossible to conduct quantitative approach for factors affecting adoption of the Semantic Web because the Semantic Web is in its infancy. However, in an early stage of introduction of the Semantic Web, it is necessary to give a model and some guidelines and for adoption and diffusion of the technology innovation to practitioners and researchers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present a model of adoption and diffusion of the Semantic Web and to offer propositions as guidelines for successful adoption through a qualitative research method including multiple case studies and in-depth interviews.The researcher conducted interviews with 15 people based on face-to face and 2 interviews by telephone and e-mail to collect data to saturate the categories. Nine interviews including 2 telephone interviews were from nine user organizations adopting the technology innovation and the others were from three supply organizations. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The interviews were recorded on digital voice recorder memory and subsequently transcribed verbatim. 196 pages of transcripts were obtained from about 12 hours interviews. Triangulation of evidence was achieved by examining each organization website and various documents, such as brochures and white papers. The researcher read the transcripts several times and underlined core words, phrases, or sentences. Then, data analysis used the procedure of open coding, in which the researcher forms initial categories of in-formation about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting information. QSR NVivo version 8.0 was used to categorize sentences including similar concepts. 47 categories derived from interview data were grouped into 21 categories from which six factors were named. Five factors affecting adoption of the Semantic Web were identified. The first factor is demand pull includ-ing requirements for improving search and integration services of the existing systems and for creating new services. Second, environmental conduciveness, reference models, uncertainty, technology maturity, potential business value, government sponsorship programs, promising prospects for technology demand, complexity and trialability affect the adoption of the Semantic Web from the perspective of technology push. Third, absorptive capacity is an important role of the adoption. Fourth, suppler's competence includes communica-tion with and training for users, and absorptive capacity of supply organization. Fifth, over-expectance which results in the gap between user's expectation level and perceived benefits has a negative impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Finally, the factor including critical mass of ontology, budget, visible effects is identified as a determinant affecting routinization and infusion. The researcher suggested a model of adoption and diffusion of the Semantic Web, representing relationships between six factors and adop-tion/diffusion as dependent variables.Six propositions are derived from the adoption/diffusion model to offer some guidelines to practitioners and a research model to further studies. Proposition 1 : Demand pull has an influence on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Proposition 1-1 : The stronger the degree of requirements for improving existing services, the more successfully the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 1-2 : The stronger the degree of requirements for new services, the more successfully the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 2 : Technology push has an influence on the adoption of the Semantic Web. Proposition 2-1 : From the perceptive of user organizations, the technology push forces such as environ-mental conduciveness, reference models, potential business value, and government sponsorship programs have a positive impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web while uncertainty and lower technology maturity have a negative impact on its adoption. Proposition 2-2 : From the perceptive of suppliers, the technology push forces such as environmental conduciveness, reference models, potential business value, government sponsorship programs, and promising prospects for technology demand have a positive impact on the adoption of the Semantic Web while uncertainty, lower technology maturity, complexity and lower trialability have a negative impact on its adoption. Proposition 3 : The absorptive capacities such as organizational formal support systems, officer's or manag-er's competency analyzing technology characteristics, their passion or willingness, and top management support are positively associated with successful adoption of the Semantic Web innovation from the perceptive of user organizations. Proposition 4 : Supplier's competence has a positive impact on the absorptive capacities of user organ-izations and technology push forces. Proposition 5 : The greater the gap of expectation between users and suppliers, the later the Semantic Web is adopted. Proposition 6 : The post-adoption activities such as budget allocation, reaching critical mass, and sharing ontology to offer sustainable services are positively associated with successful routinization and infusion of the Semantic Web innovation from the perceptive of user organizations.

Virtual community is a social aggregation to attain some goals in an IT-supported virtual space (Lee et al., 2002). As lots of virtual communities generate robust and reliable outputs with low control and low incentive, previous researchers was interested in the questions, "why do they participate?" or "how are they controlled?". But, as Katz (1964) said, the most important part of the high-performing organization is the behaviors of members in the organization. Therefore, this research is to examine the relationship between the performance and the behaviors of participants in the virtual community.First, we propose 6 types of behaviors related to high performance in the virtual community: 'Continuous Attendance', 'Complying with the organizational value, policies, and regulations', 'Protection', 'Suggestion for the improving', 'Self-training', and 'Favorable behavior'. The six types of behaviors are extracted from the framework of Katz (1964) and Brief and Motowidlo (1986).The reason why each behavior is positively related with high-performance is that those who continuously attend have more responsibility than temporary participants do; complying with the rules of a virtual commun-ity means that they may make more reliable outcome; 'Protection' is one of the prosocial-behaviors and those who protect the community may concern the benefit of the virtual community when they participate; those who suggest some ideas for improvement may contribute to the virtual community; 'Self-training' behavior means that participants really want to have high quality in their contribution; those who have 'Favorable attitude' consider other members in the virtual community when they participate.Then, we perform an empirical analysis with the survey from participants in the Knowledge service of Naver.com, to show those behaviors are associated with the high-performance. To make the measurement for the six behaviors, we use CVR (content validity ratio) method (Lawshe, 1975), interviewing 12 experts. The dependent variable, performance of participation, is measured by 'ratio of selected answer' given by the Naver.com. We use email survey. We sent 1200 emails to randomly selected participants in the knowledge service and received 282 responses. The results of our empirical analysis show that 4('Continuous Attendance', 'Suggestion for the improving', 'Self-training', 'Favorable attitude') are positively related to the performance, but 2('Complying with the organizational value, policies, and regulations' and 'Protection') are not significant. In line with Fitzgerald (2006), we expect that participants in the virtual community may behave similarly to employees in the off-line firms for the high performance. But 2 behaviors have different results.The reason that the 'Complying with the organizational value' behavior is not sufficiently related to perform-ance is that the motivation of participants is more related to intrinsic pleasure or altruism than external reward. Also, the ‘Protection’ behavior has no significant relationship with performance, which means that the high-performing participants have little concern about the problems in the community.

Despite the growing emphasis on the importance of knowledge exchange among supply chain partic-ipants, few companies have fully exploited the knowledge resources held by their supply chain partners. Among many reasons for this phenomenon, recent literature on inter-firm knowledge exchange identifies knowledge complementarities between the supply channel partners as an important determinant of knowl-edge exchange. Firms participating in a supply chain are likely to exchange partners’ complementary knowledge. In order to extract value from them, it is important to recognize the difference between the potential value and the implementation of this potential value. However, the literature fails to distinguish between potential knowledge complementarities and implemented knowledge complementarities. In order to realize the value of potential knowledge complementarities, knowledge should be exchanged and effec-tively integrated in the supply channel. Further, investigating inter-firm knowledge exchange from both partners’ perspectives is important espe-cially when there are interdependencies between the channel partners. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of potential knowledge complementarities on knowledge exchange in buyer-suppli-er relationships by looking at both partners’ perspectives. This research also includes trust in partner’s com-petence and inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) as they are relevant when the complementary knowledge flows between organizations. The data required for this field study was collected from 70 buyers and their suppliers in three multinational enterprises in two different industries (Automobile manufacturing and Telecommunication services) head-quartered in Korea. The results indicate that potential knowledge complementarities between buyer and supplier do not directly influence knowledge exchange, but indirectly through trust in partner’s competence. And the results indicate that competence-based trust and IOIS have direct effects on knowledge exchange. Empirical results also show that IOIS moderates the relationship between potential knowledge com-plementarities and knowledge exchange. This study is a first attempt to empirically verify the theoretical model about potential knowledge com-plementarities and to investigate the impact of potential knowledge complementarities on interfirm knowl-edge exchange. From a theoretical perspective, this study not only clarifies the distinction between potential knowledge complementarities and implemented knowledge complementarities, but also develops an instru-ment to measure the concept of potential knowledge complementarities in the context of operational and planning knowledge in a supply chain. Further, we develop a theoretical framework suggesting that potential knowledge complementarities of partners in a supply chain affect knowledge exchange directly and indirectly through competence-based trust. The findings from this study have some managerial implications for practicing managers as well. First, buyers should search for suppliers that have potential complementary knowledge, which can be integrated to create synergy through interfirm knowledge exchange. Furthermore, firms must develop mechanisms to identify potential complementary knowledge of partners. Second, firms should continue their endeavor to develop their own unique knowledge so that their knowledge can benefit the entire supply channel. Finally, trust among supply chain partners turns out to be an important factor for interfirm knowledge exchange. Therefore, effective management for engendering trustworthy buyer-supplier relationships should receive ap-propriate attention from managers.

Recently, due to the globalization of the IT(Information Technology) market, devices and systems designed in one country are used in other countries as well. This phenomenon is becoming the key factor for increased interest on cross-cultural, or cross-national, research within the IT area. However, as the IT market is becoming bigger and more globalized, a great number of IT practitioners are having difficulty in designing and develop-ing devices or systems which can provide optimal experience. This is because not only tangible factors such as language and a country’s economic or industrial power affect the user experience of a certain device or system but also invisible and intangible factors as well. Among such invisible and intangible factors, the cultural characteristics of users from different countries may affect the user experience of certain devices or systems because cultural characteristics affect how they understand and interpret the devices or systems. In other words, when users evaluate the quality of overall user experience, the cultural characteristics of each user act as a perceptual lens that leads the user to focus on a certain elements of experience. Therefore, there is a need within the IT field to consider cultural characteristics when designing or developing certain devices or systems and plan a strategy for localization.In such an environment, existing IS studies identify the culture with the country, emphasize the importance of culture in a national level perspective, and hypothesize that users within the same country have same cultural characteristics. Under such assumptions, these studies focus on the moderating effects of cultural characteristics on a national level within a certain theoretical framework. This has already been suggested by cross-cultural studies conducted by scholars such as Hofstede[1980] in providing numerical research results and measurement items for cultural characteristics and using such results or items as they increase the efficiency of studies.However, such national level culture has its limitations in forecasting and explaining individual-level behav-iors such as voluntary device or system usage. This is because individual cultural characteristics are the outcome of not only the national culture but also the culture of a race, company, local area, family, and other groups that are formulated through interaction within the group. Therefore, national or nationally dominant cultural characteristics may have its limitations in forecasting and explaining the cultural character-istics of an individual. Moreover, past studies in psychology suggest a possibility that there exist different cultural characteristics within a single individual depending on the subject being measured or its context. For example, in relation to individual vs. collective characteristics, which is one of the major cultural character-istics, an individual may show collectivistic characteristics when he or she is with family or friends but show individualistic characteristics in his or her workplace. Therefore, this study acknowledged such limitations of past studies and conducted a research within the framework of ‘theoretically integrated model of user satisfaction and emotional attachment’, which was developed through a former study, on how the effects of different experience elements on emotional attachment or user satisfaction are differentiated depending on the individual cultural characteristics related to a system or device usage. In order to do this, this study hypothesized the moderating effects of four cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and power distance) as suggested by Hofstede[1980] within the theoretically integrated model of emotional attachment and user satisfaction. Statistical tests were then implemented on these moderating effects through conducting surveys with users of four digital devices (mobile phone, MP3 player, LCD TV, and refrigerator) in three countries (US, Germany, and Russia).In order to explain and forecast the behavior of personal device or system users, individual cultural charac-teristics must be measured, and depending on the target device or system, measurements must be measured independently. Through this suggestion, this study hopes to provide new and useful perspectives for future IS research.

Virtual community(VC) will increasingly be organized as commercial enterprises, with the objective of earning an attractive financial return by providing members with valuable resources and environment. For example, Cyworld.com in Korea uses several community services to enable customers of Cyworld to take control of their own value as potential purchasers of products and services. Although initial adoption is important for online network service success, it does not necessarily result in the desired managerial perform-ance unless the initial usage is continuously related to the continuous usage and purchase. Particularly, the customer who receives relevant online services and is well equipped with online network services, will trust the online service provider and perceive less risk and experience more activities such as continuous usage and purchase. Thus, how to promote continued online service usage or, alternatively, how to prevent discontinuance is a critical issue for VC service providers to consider. By aggregating a wide range of information and online environments for customers and providing trust to its members, the service providers of virtual communities help to reduce the perceived risk of continuous usage and purchase. Drill down, online service managers realize that achieving strong and sustained customers who continuously use online service and purchase on it is crucial. Therefore, the research into this online service continuance will identify the relationship between the initial usage and the continuous usage and purchase.The research of continuous usage or post adoption has recently emerged as an important issue in the IS literature. Individuals’ information systems(IS) continuous usage decisions are congruent with consumers’ repeat purchase decisions. The TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) paradigm has been strongly confirmed across a wide range from product purchase on EC to online service usage contexts. The analysis of IS usage based on TAM has proven to be successful across almost online service contexts. However, most of previous studies have focused on only an area (i.e., VC or EC). Just little research has tried to analyze the relationship between VC and EC. The effect of some factors on user intention, captured through several theories such as TAM, has been demonstrated. Yet, few studies have explored the salient relationships of VC users’ EC acceptance. To fill this gap between VC and EC research, this paper attempts to develop a research model that extends the TAM perspective in view of the additional contributions of trust in the service provider and trust in members on some factors that affect EC and VC adoption. In this extension, we applied the TAM-to-TAM(T2T) model, and analyzed the transfer effect of trust between these two TAMs.The research model was empirically tested on the context of a social network service. The model was to extend TAM with the trust concept for the virtual community environment from the perspective of tasks. By building an extended model of TAM and examining the relationships between trust and the existing variables of TAM, it is aimed to explain a user’s continuous intention to use VC and purchase on EC. The unit of analysis in this paper is an individual user of a virtual community. The population of interest is the individual with the experiences in virtual community. The data for this paper was made available via a Web survey of VC users. In total, 281 cases were gathered for about one week, but there were some missing values in the sample and there were some inappropriate cases. Thus, only 248 cases were finally analyzed.We chose the structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses and it is better suited for explaining complex relationships than the other methods. In this test, AMOS was used to test the Structural Equation Model (SEM). Noticeable results have been found in the T2T model regarding the factors affecting the intention to use of virtual community and loyalty. Our result showed that trust transfer plays a key role in forming the two adoption beliefs. Overall, this study preliminarily confirms the salience of trust transfer in online service.