Earticle

Some researches insist that, to participate in an e-partnership, a distributor needs a given level of trust to reduce the perceived risk of an e-partnership to his/her own threshold. However, other researches insist that if a distributor has only a given level of trust in his/her suppliers, irrelevant of the perceived risk level, he/she participates in the e-partnership. Thus, from the perspective of a distributor, this study built a trust model in which these two viewpoints were reflected. And then this study examined whether or not perceived risk mediates an influence of trust to e-partnership. The proposed trust model was tested with 265 questionnaires about a distributor-supplier e-partnership in food wholesale markets. The analysis results indicated that perceived risk partially had a mediating effect between trust and e-partnership intention. That is, of the two risk types, only perceived performance risk mediated an influence from competence trust to e-partnership intention. Relational risk did not play a mediating role between goodwill trust and e-partnership intention. This result implies two managerial meanings. First, a distributor intends to engage in e-partnership with his/her supplier, irrelevant of relational risk's level if goodwill trust level surpasses his/her own threshold. Thus, suppliers should concentrate more effort in developing goodwill trust than in reducing relational risk. To develop goodwill trust, they should endeavor to establish mutual interests and individual trust with their distributor, and to utilize institutional trust bases. Second, a distributor requires a certain competence in his/her suppliers to sufficiently reduce performance risk caused by e-partnership. Thus, to develop competence trust in e-partnership, suppliers should improve on any lack of competence and build a good reputation.

This study compares and contrasts the intellectual development of the MIS field in Korea from 2005 to 2009 to that of international trends by using a keyword co-occurrence network analysis of the two flagship journals: APJIS and MIS Quarterly. From 316 research articles in these two journals, 132 unique and most frequently co-occurred keywords were put into analysis. The results of structural equivalence show a mild correlation between APJIS and MIS Quarterly. The e-commerce, trust, and technology adoption are the high frequency keywords in both journals. In Korea e-learning, purchasing, and recommendation systems turn out to be important keywords while outsourcing, research method, quantitative method, design research, information theory, and empirical research are in average international journals. This connotes that the Korean scholarship tends to focus more on practically oriented topics, but the clustering and relational mapping of research topics in each journal show a mild level of overlap with distinctive orientations due to intrinsic disparities depending on the concerned journals’ geographical scopes, namely domestic or global.

The study was originated from recognition that project participants’ satisfaction should be improved to raise project performance and to make progress of a successful project since the above dissatisfaction was operated as a danger factor of the project. The study selected one large-scale sample project and attempted measuring characteristics of the project, participants’ satisfaction and project performance with the whole project participants. The study analyzed correlations between individual level (team members) and group level (development team), and examined what effect a sub project manager under complicated hierarchical organization of the large-scale project, namely PL (project leader)’s leadership style had on each individual project participant’s satisfaction and what effect project uncertainty in organization/technology environment had on project participants’ satisfaction and project performance. The study verified that development team (group) had an effect on team member (individual)-level project participants’ satisfaction by disclosing that there was a significant dispersion among groups within project participants’ satisfaction by each individual. It is analyzed that it is necessary to make improvement through approach by each pertinent team to raise individual-level project participants’ satisfaction. The study also verified PL’s ideal leadership under strict methodology and hierarchical control of the large-scale project. Based on the verification of the hypotheses, the results of the analysis were produced as follows. First, the development team affects the satisfaction level that an individual has when he/she participates in a project. This suggests that the satisfaction with project participation should be improved at the team level. In addition, the project management style and leadership orientation of the manager of a sub project who is mostly affected by the team proved to have a direct influence on the satisfaction with project participation and project performances. Second, both the performance-oriented leadership and the relationship-oriented leadership of the PL of the development team were verified to have a significant effect on the satisfaction of the team members associated with project participation. In other words, when the team members recognize that the PL of the development team shows both the performance-oriented leadership and the relationship-oriented leadership, their satisfaction with project participation increases accordingly. Third, it was verified that the uncertainty of the organizational environment significantly affects the satisfaction level when the PL of the development team exerts a relationship-oriented and performance-oriented leadership. The higher the uncertainty of the organizational environment is, the more the satisfaction with project participation decreases whereas the relationship-oriented leadership has a more positive effect on the satisfaction than the performance-oriented leadership style. Fourth, when the PL of the development team exerts the relationship-related and performance-related leadership, the uncertainty of the technological environment has a significant influence on the satisfaction level. The higher the uncertainty of the technological environment is, the more the satisfaction with project participation decreases whereas the performance-oriented leadership has a more positive effect on the satisfaction than the relationship-oriented leadership style. The result of the research on the uncertainty of the project environment suggests that when the development team leader exerts a relationship-oriented and performance-oriented leadership style, the uncertainty of the organizational environment has a significant effect on the satisfaction with project participation; the higher the uncertainty of the organizational environment, the more the satisfaction level decreases, and the relationship-oriented leadership style affects the satisfaction level more positively than the performance-oriented leadership style. In addition, when the development team leader displays a relationship-oriented and performance-oriented leadership style, the uncertainty of the technological environment has a significant effect on the satisfaction with project participation; the higher the uncertainty of the technological environment, the more the satisfaction level decreases. The performance-oriented leadership style as well affects the satisfaction level more positively than the relationship-oriented leadership style. Based on the above results, the research provides the following implications when handling multiple concurrent projects. First, the satisfaction with the participation in the multiple concurrent projects needs to be enhanced at the team (group) level. Second, the manager of the project team, particularly the middle managers should have both a performance- oriented and relationship (task and human)-oriented attitude and exert a consolidated leadership in order to improve the satisfaction of team members with project participation and their performances. Third, as the uncertainty factor of the technological and organizational environment among the characteristics factors of the project has room for methodological improvement depending on one’s effort even though there are some complications, we need to continuously prevent and control the risks resulting from the uncertainties of the technological and organizational environment of the project in order to enhance the satisfaction of project participation and project performances. Fourth, the performance (task)-oriented leadership is required when there is uncertainty in a technological environment while the relationship (human)-oriented leadership is required when there is uncertainty in an organizational environment. This research has the following limitations. First, this research intended to select one large-sized sample project and measure the project characteristics, the satisfaction of all the participants associated with project participation, and their performances. Therefore, it is inappropriate to generalize and apply the result of this result onto other numerous projects. Second, as this case study entailed a survey to measure the characteristics factors and performance of the project, since the result value was based on the perception of project team members, the data may have insufficient objectivity. Third, though this research targeted on all the project participants, some development teams did not provide sufficient data and questionnaires were collected from some specific development teams among the 23 development teams, causing a significant deviation in the response rate among the development teams. Therefore, we need to continuously conduct the follow-up researches making comparisons among the multiple projects, and centering on the characteristics factors of the project and its satisfaction level.

This study investigates the impact of website contents on Internet auction success. Based on the marketing concepts of stimuli, consumer behavior, and product involvement, the research model presents the theoretical relationships between the key factors of website contents and Internet auction performance. This study examines particularly four dimensions of website contents including transaction features, auction-specific features, seller's reputation, and information quality, which are deemed to have significant impact on the Internet auction performance. Each dimension of website contents is hypothesized to have a unique impact on a bidder's decision-making, which may vary depending on the bidder's level of involvement in the product. While transaction and auction-specific features serve as necessary components for successful auctions, a seller's reputation and information quality, as parts of satisfactory requirements, acutely affect bidders' decisions, especially those with high involvement to buy the product through a particular auction site. The outcomes of the analysis, in general, support the proposed model. The study results also provide meaningful implications on ways in which auction websites can be improved for both sellers and auction service providers.

Recently, firms are operating a number of teams to accomplish organizational performance. Especially, ad hoc teams like proposal preparation team are quite different from permanent teams like R&D team in the sense of how the team forms network structure and deals with organizational learning culture and knowledge management participation efforts. Moreover, depending on the team characteristics, individual creativity will differ from each other, which will lead to organizational performance eventually. Previous studies in the field of creativity are lacking in this issue. So main objectives of this study are organized as follows. First, the issue of how to improve individual creativity and organizational performance will be analyzed empirically. This issue will be performed depending on team characteristics such as ad hoc team and permanent team. Antecedents adopted for this research objective are cultural and knowledge factors such as organizational learning culture, and knowledge management participation. Second, the network structure such as degree centrality, and structural hole is used to analyze its influence on individual creativity and organizational performance. SI (System Integration) companies are facing severely tough requirements from clients to submit very creative proposals. Also, R&D teams are widely accepted as relatively creative teams because their responsibilities are focused on suggesting innovative techniques to make their companies remain competitive in the market. SI teams are usually ad hoc, while R&D teams are permanent on an average. By taking advantage of these characteristics of the two kinds of teams, we will prove the validity of the proposed research questions. To obtain the survey data, we accessed 7 SI teams (74 members), and 6 R&D teams (63 members), collecting 137 valid questionnaires. PLS technique was applied to analyze the survey data. Results are as follows. First, in case of SI teams, organizational learning culture affects individual creativity significantly. Meanwhile, knowledge management participation has a significant influence on individual creativity for the permanent teams. Second, degree centrality influences individual creativity significantly in case of SI teams. This is comparable with the fact that structural hole has a significant impact on individual creativity for the R&D teams. Practical implications can be summarized as follows: First, network structure of ad hoc team should be designed differently from one of permanent team. Ad hoc team is supposed to show a high creativity in a rather short period, implying that network density among team members should be improved, and those members with high degree centrality should be encouraged to show their individual creativity and take a leading role by allowing them to get heavily engaged in knowledge sharing and diffusion. In contrast, permanent team should be designed to take advantage of structural hole instead of focusing on network density. Since structural hole can be utilized very effectively in the permanent team, strong arbitrators' merits in the permanent team will increase and therefore helps increase both network efficiency and effectiveness too. In this way, individual creativity in the permanent team is likely to lead to organizational creativity in a seamless way. Second, way of increasing individual creativity should be sought from the perspective of organizational culture and knowledge management. Organization is supposed to provide a cultural atmosphere in which innovative idea suggestions and active discussion among team members are encouraged. In this way, trust builds up among team members, facilitating the formation of organizational learning culture. Third, in the ad hoc team, organizational learning culture should be built such a way that individual creativity can grow up fast in a rather short period. Since time is tight, reasonable compensation policy, leader's initiatives, and learning culture formation should be done in a short period so that mutual trust is built among members quickly, and necessary knowledge and information can be learnt rapidly. Fourth, in the permanent team, it should be kept in mind that the degree of participation in knowledge management determines level of individual creativity. Therefore, the team ought to facilitate knowledge circulation process such as knowledge creation, storage, sharing, utilization, and learning among team members, which will lead to team performance. In this way, firms must control knowledge networks in permanent team and ad hoc team in a way mentioned above so that individual creativity as well as team performance can be maximized.

This paper introduces an electronic auction service to be provided on interactive TV (T-auction). This converged service is expected to much enhance the quality of the service to current online auction users through vivid visualization and live interactive experience. Our study focuses on how the characteristics of the interactive TV-based shopping platform can affect users’ attitudes towards the converged service. To develop our proposed research model, we extended the technology acceptance model and integrated it with a hedonic factor, or perceived enjoyment, to reflect the dual characteristics of the converged system. We also adopted the variable of intermediary trust in the service as a critical mediating determinant for a successful commutations-mediated commerce. The research model was verified with an empirical study conducted on 970 Korean online auction users. Results show that both trust and perceived usefulness positively affect user adoption of the service. Trust had not only a direct effect on users’ attitudes toward T-auction but also an indirect one by mediating the service quality, information quality, perceived enjoyment, and ease of use. Meanwhile, the hedonic factor of T-auction contributes to increasing both the level of the intermediary’s trust and its perceived usefulness. Users’ enjoyment also was found to help form a positive attitude toward T-auction services. Theoretical and practical implications of this study for current e-auction service providers and potential t-auction service providers are also discussed.