Journal of Management Information Systems

Volume 19 Number 1 2002 pp. 5-10

Editorial Introduction

Zwass, Vladimir

ABSTRACT:

ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS, OR ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) systems, are the information systems that come closest to belying the early and resonant claim that MIS is a mirage [1]. They are indeed expected to support the enterprise's operations and provide its various levels of management with information in a highly integrated manner. When integrated beyond the confines of the individual enterprise with the systems of its business partners, such extended enterprise systems engender a vision of a network of value-creating processes cutting across organizational boundaries. (They also engender nightmarish visions of panoptical control in those susceptible to such visions.) ERP can form a fundamental platform for the informational infrastructure of an enterprise. However, it is crucial to see that they do not become an infrastructure automatically. Strategic planning, organizational fit, business process transformation, motivated and trained human resources, and last, and perhaps most vital, a proper implementation process, are all necessary preconditions to creating a lasting yet flexible infrastructure. The fact that many companies fail in this creation is the testimony to how difficult it is.

There is a definite value, then, in studying the papers included in the Special Section on ERP by its Guest Editors, Arik Ragowsky and Toni M. Somers, who will also introduce these works to you. The papers offer, respectively, an in-depth study of several ERP implementations analyzed as organizational learning processes, a quasi-experimental study of the implementation of Customer Relationship Management that extends ERP forward, and the analysis of the business impacts of ERP. The latter study shows that the firms that invest in ERP tend to exhibit superior financial performance. According to this innovative study, an average ERP implementation is a productive investment. A note of warning: there are no average implementations. There are those that succeed and those that do not, in many ways and over time.

Two papers in the general section of the issue deal with the effects of information presentation. Kai H. Lim and Izak Benbasat study experimentally the relationship between multimedia presentation, and the retention and recall of the presented information. Their theory-based investigation shows that multimedia has a significant positive effect on the recall of explanatory, but not of descriptive, information. The results both account for the mixed outcomes of the prior experimental reports and lead to practical conclusions for the employment of multimedia.

Roderick I. Swaab and his colleagues study the role of visualization of the possible outcomes on the progress of negotiations with the aid of a negotiation support system. More specifically, the investigators study whether the visualization supports better the formation of shared mental models, common visions of the possible reality, among the negotiators. By improving well-defined aspects of negotiation, computer-supported visualization of information does indeed lead to faster consensus as well as higher satisfaction. All of this places increased responsibility on the modeling adopted during the negotiation.

The inclusion of functions in a digital product such as software is to a high degree a matter of competitive positioning with respect to the function bundle expected by the desired buyer segment. Marginal costs of production and distribution are close to nil. As a result of a game-theoretic analysis of what functionality to include in a software package, Kai Lung Hui and Kar Yan Tam are able to offer practical suggestions to both the first-moving software developer and to the market followers.

The performance of information-system projects has been studied by a large number of researchers and practitioners. Here, Adel M. Aladwani offers and tests in the field a theory-based integrated model of project performance. To benefit managers, the study surfaces a set of factors that will have a significant impact on the performance of their projects. This synthesis should also encourage researchers both to extend the model with additional constructs and to test it in multiple environments.

The World Wide Web is the principal vehicle for electronic commerce-and an arena for a wide range of actions and behaviors. As a marketplace of invisible sellers and buyers, the Web-based marketspace is inherently short on trust. Therefore, seeking the understanding of the trust construct has been recently preoccupying a number of scholars, and seeking trust itself has been the preoccupation of online firms. Here, Anol Bhattacherjee presents and tests a theoretically founded scale to measure the degree of trust an online company engenders. The model is refined into a parsimonious instrument that may be expected to serve both the practitioners and the future researchers.

It does not take an experienced ethnographer to establish that much of the Web navigation done in the workplace is not precisely aligned with the corporate objectives. Should the employers wish to limit such activities, they could resort to profiling with the use of artificial neural networks (ANN), as proposed here by Murugan Anandarajan. The ANN-based behavior models proposed and tested by this author permit to classify the employees' Web behavior a priori, and thus to establish organizationally desirable Web use policies. The study is also of interest as an exemplar of a novel use of ANN to address organizational problems.

It is traditional at the time we enter a new year of the Journal's publication for me to thank the Editorial Board, authors, readers, and technical editors of JMIS for their contribution. The primary guarantors of the Journal's quality, its reviewers, deserve very special thanks. Here are the referees of the Journal of Management Information Systems:

William Acar
Dennis A. Adams
Niv Ahituv
Murugan Anandarajan
Hayward P. Andres
Dorine Andrews
Solomon Antony
Yoris Au
Sulin Ba
Barbro Back
Yannis Bakos
P.R. Balasubramanian
Dirk Baldwin
Reza Barkhi
Henri Barki
Genevieve Bassellier
Dinesh Batra
Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Salvatore Belardo
Skip Benamati
Michael Benaroch
Francois Bergeron
Anol Bhattacherjee
Sudip Bhattacherjee
Bijoy Bordoloi
Indranil Bose
Carol V. Brown
Robert M. Brown
Glenn Browne
Jeffrey Butterfield
Terry A. Byrd
Edward G. Cale Jr.
Judith Carlisle
Sven Carlsson
Houston H. Carr
William J. Carroll
Robert P. Cerveny
Sergio de Cesare
Namsik Chang
Patrick Chau
Hong-Mei Chen
Hsing Kenneth Cheng
Robert T.H. Chi
Roger Chiang
William C. Chismar
Jong-min Choe
H. Michael Chung
Roger Clarke
Randy Cooper
Paul Cule
Qizhi Dai
Ronald Dattero
Michael J. Davern
Donald L. Davis
Gordon Depledge
Sarv Devaraj
Ali Dogramaci
Peter Duchessi
Adrie C.M. Dumay
Omar A. El Sawy
Hyun B. Eom
Gerald E. Evans
Ming Fan
Bijan Fazlollahi
Steven Feiner
Kirk Fiedler
Edmond P. Fitzgerald
Jerry Fjermestad
Steven W. Floyd
Edward Fox
Dennis Galletta
Edward J. Garrity
Erol Gelenbe
Mark Ginsburg
Janis L. Gogan
Dale Goodhue
Sanjay Gosain
Martin D. Goslar
Paul Gray
Saul Greenberg
Robert K. Griffin
Michael D. Grigoriades
Mary-Liz Grise
Bin Gu
Alok Gupta
Jungpil Hahn
Barbara Haley
Bill C. Hardgrave
Il-Horn Hann
Paul Hart
Stephen Hayne
Starr Roxanne Hiltz
Rudy Hirschheim
Richard Hoffman
John A. Hoxmeier
Paul Hu
Qing Hu
Wayne Huang
Cary T. Hughes
Kai Lung Hui
Ard Huizing
E. Gerald Hurst
Zahir Irani
Gretchen I. Irwin
Tomas Isakowitz
Bharat A. Jain
Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa
Murray E. Jennex
Linda Ellis Johnson
Kailash Joshi
Charles Kacmar
Surinder Kahai
Timo Kakola
Ajit Kambil
P.K. Kannan
Jahangir Karimi
Michael Kattan
Timothy Kayworth
Mark Keil
Robert T. Keim
Chris Kemerer
Julie E. Kendall
William J. Kettinger
Omar E.M. Khalil
Melody Y. Kiang
Rajiv Kishore
Gary Klein
Stefan Koch
Esther Koster
Kenneth A. Kozar
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
Akhil Kumar
Ram Kumar
Mary C. Lacity
Simon S.K. Lam
Gwynne Larsen
Tor J. Larsen
Kathy S. Lassila
Heeseok Lee
Ho Geun Lee
Jungwoo Lee
Dorothy Leidner
Richard Leifer
Mary Jane Lenard
Hugo Levecq
Ting-Peng Liang
Nancy Lightner
Kai Lim
Yihwa Irene Liou
Astrid Lipp
Paulo J.G. Lisboa
Henry C. Lucas Jr.
Mark Lycett
Kalle Lyytinen
William McCarthy
Jane M. Mackay
Roy McKelvey
D. Harrison McKnight
Ephraim R. McLean
Poppy L. McLeod
Simha R. Magal
Mo A. Mahmood
David Maier
Ji-Ye Mao
Salvatore T. March
Anne P. Massey
Charles H. Mawhinney
Jerrold H. May
Roberto J. Mejias
Steven C. Michael
Thomas Miller
Shaila Miranda
Rajesh Mirani
William H. Money
Ali R. Montazemi
Ramiro Montealegre
Jeanette Moody
Ajay S. Mookerjee
Scott Moore
Tanya Morley
Jolene Morrison
Michael D. Myers
Kathleen Mykytyn
Peter P. Mykytyn Jr.
Barin N. Nag
Murli Nagasundaram
R. Ryan Nelson
Boon Siong Neo
Fred Niederman
Mark Nissen
Rosalie Ocker
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Levent Orman
Richard Orwig
Jonathan W. Palmer
Raymond R. Panko
Michael Parent
Diane Parente
Kenneth Peffers
Norman Pendegraft
Mark Pendergast
Roger A. Pick
Leo L. Pipino
Steven Poltrock
Jean-Charles Pomerol
Gerald Post
John H. Prager
Jayesh Prasad
G. Premkumar
Sandeep Purao
S. Raghunathan
Arik Ragowsky
T.S. Ragu-Nathan
Arun Rai
Rex Kelly Rainer Jr.
K.S. Raman
B. Ramesh
Richard G. Ramirez
H.R. Rao
R. Ravichandran
T. Ravichandran
Sury Ravindran
Amy W. Ray
Louis Raymond
Paul Resnick
William B. Richmond
Frederick Riggins
Daniel Robey
Michael B. Rogich
Young U. Ryu
Timo Saarinen
Rajiv Sabherwal
Sharon Salveter
G. Lawrence Sanders
Radhika Santhanam
Carol Saunders
Naveed Saleem
George Schell
K.D. Schenk
Judy Scott
Irmtraud S. Seeborg
Kishore Sengupta
Vikram Sethi
Kenneth C. Sevcik
Dennis G. Severance
Theresa M. Shaft
Steven Sheetz
Jim Sheffield
Olivia Sheng
Morgan M. Shepherd
Michael Shields
Siew Kien Sia
Mark S. Silver
Atish P. Sinha
Sumit Sircar
H. Jeff Smith
Eli M. Snir
Charles A. Snyder
William E. Spangler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Thomas F. Stafford
Sandy Staples
Eric W. Stein
Dick Stenmark
John M. Stevens
Veda Storey
Girish Subramanian
Ramesh Subramanian
Ephraim Sudit
Robert T. Sumichrast
Shankar Sunarajan
Arun Sundararajan
Tae Kyung Sung
Roderick I. Swaab
Edward J. Szewczak
Paul P. Tallon
Kar Yan Tam
Bernard C.Y. Tan
Mohan R. Tanniru
Alfred Taudes
David P. Tegarden
James T.C. Teng
Hock-Hai Teo
Thompson Teo
Matthew Thatcher
Ron Thompson
James Y.L. Thong
John Tillquist
Peter Tingling
Leon van der Torre
Jonathan K. Trower
Duane Truex
Gregory E. Truman
Ilkka Tuomi
Jon A. Turner
Brad Tuttle
Craig K. Tyran
N.S. Umanath
Rustam Vahidov
Yaniv Vakrat
Vasja Vehovar
Alfredo Vellido
Boris S. Verkhovsky
Michael Wade
Steven Walczak
Bin Wang
Michael S. Wang
Shouhong Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Carol Watson
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Chih-Ping Wei
Charles E. Wells
Larry West
J. Christopher Westland
Seungjin Whang
Michael E. Whitman
George Widmeyer
Fons Wijnhoven
Barbara Wixom
Kristoff K. Wolyniec
Hans Wortmann
Evangelos Yfantis
Han Zhang
J. Leon Zhao
Lina Zhou
Ilze Zigurs
Moshe Zviran

I wish to acknowledge the respective contributions of the outgoing members of the Editorial Board, George M. Kasper, who served the Journal over a number of years, and Tung X. Bui. I would like to welcome to the Board its new members, Amitava Dutta of George Mason University, Lorin M. Hitt of the University of Pennsylvania, Albert Segars of the University of North Carolina, and Peter Weill of MIT.

VLADIMIR ZWASS
Editor-in-Chief

REFERENCE

1. Dearden, J. MIS is a mirage. Harvard Business Review, 50, 1 (January-February 1972), 90-99.