Managing Web Technologies Acquisition, Utilization and Organization Change

This chapter presents a perspective on web technologies acquisition, utilization, organization change and transformation grounded in Gidden’s theory of structuration, i.e., a contextualist analysis. A contextualist analysis is processually based, emergent, situational, and holistic, marrying both theory and practice. This chapter’s paradigm affords a substantive analytical tool to the practitioner for understanding and managing not only web-based IT acquisition, utilization and organization change, but all IT-based recursive, organization changes and transformations. Organization change associated with IT acquisition and utilization is posited as concomitantly necessary. Organization change is recursive, dynamic, multilevel, and nonlinear, i.e., an “enacted” environment. Ever present organization opposing values are treated dialectically, i.e. as paradox, operating simultaneously. The nature of the resolution of such paradox enabled/inhibits reframing, i.e., organization transformation and change. The paradigm presented defines an organization change continuum, delineating four organization responses to contradiction and paradox. The chapter explicates organization culture and organization learning as systemic, multiplicative metaforce underpinnings of organization change and sociocognitively-based, recursive, structurational processual dynamics. The chapter discusses use of the IT acquisition and utilization paradigm for organization diagnosis as well as customization of organization change interventions. The chapter suggests further typologically-based research venues.

World Wide Wait

The explosive popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW) is the biggest event in the Internet era. Since its public introduction in 1991, WWW has become an important channel for electronic commerce, information access, and publication. With exponential growth in the WWW market, Internet connection speed has become a critical issue. The long waiting time for accessing web pages has always been a major problem for WWW users (Lightner, Bose and Salvendy, 1996), especially with the increasing use of multimedia technology and the doubling of Internet users every 18-24 months. A recent survey conducted by the GVU (Graphic, Visualization, & Usability) Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology also indicates long downloading time to be the biggest problem experienced by WWW users (GVU, October 1998). This problem is so noticeable that WWW users sometimes equate the “WWW” acronym with “World Wide Wait”! Although information technology for supporting the infrastructure of WWW is continually being updated and improved, it is still not able to satisfy industry requirements and demand. In this chapter, we review the usage pattern of WWW as well as topics related to speed of Internet access such as bandwidth, Internet connection alternatives, and technology to speed up WWW access. In addition, we report an experimental research that measured and analyzed users’ “tolerable” waiting time in accessing the WWW. Based on the results of the study, we provide guidelines for web designers regarding page size restrictions in web development.

The Five Stages of Customizing Web-Based Mass Information Systems

Web-enabled standard software for electronic commerce incorporating adaptive components will reduce the barriers between productive data processing and dispositive data processing like market analysis, Web-tracking, or data warehouses. A conceptual research framework for analyzing the evolution of electronic markets as well as their business ecosystem represents the foundation of a document-oriented modeling technique for analyzing and designing (adaptive) Web-based Mass Information Systems. A Java prototype based on this meta-model is presented which supports cooperative efforts of academic research, IS departments, top-level management, and functional units to map and classify individual and aggregated customer behavior. The symbolic visualization of user clickstreams based on this analysis is intended to streamline the decision processes necessary for implementing, updating and maintaining complex Web-enabled applications.

Planning for Effectiveness Web-Based Commerce Application Development

An ever-increasing number of businesses have established Web sites to engage in commercial activities today, forming the so-called Web-based commerce. However, careful planning and preparation are needed for those businesses to achieve their intended purposes with this new channel of distribution. This chapter proposes a framework for planning effective Web-based commerce application development based on prior research in hypermedia and human-computer interfaces, and recent research on Web-based commerce. The framework regards Web application development as a type of software development projects. At the onset, the project’s social acceptability is investigated. Next, system feasibility is carried out. If the proposed project is viable, its Web-page interface is examined both from the functionality, contents, and navigability points of view. The use of the framework will contribute to more effective Web-based commerce application development.

Managing the Business of Web-Enabled Education and Training

Studies have shown that people remember 20 percent of what they see, 40 percent of what they see and hear, and 70 percent of what they see, hear, and do. Interactive learning applications provide a multi-sensory learning environment that maximizes the way people retain information. This accelerates learning and permits novices to perform like experts while they learn new skills. Powerful authoring systems enable vast amounts of information to be compiled quickly and presented in compelling and meaningful ways. In addition, these applications are easy and inexpensive to update. With interactive multimedia, everyone sees the same information and is exposed to identical learning environments. The reliability of instruction, quality of information, and presentation of material is consistent from user to user and from session to session. This chapter discusses a framework for distance learning and distributed learning and two case studies of a web-based synchronous learning environment in two organizations with different corporate cultures. Current challenges and implications for management are discussed.

Developing Applications for the Web

The use of the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, has grown at a phenomenal rate. The Internet, the world’s largest computer network, grew from approximately 25,000 connected networks with over 6.6 million computers worldwide in 1996 (Neubarth, 1996) to more than 50,000 networks and 16 million computers today (Conger & Mason, 1998). The fastest growing resource on the Internet is the World Wide Web (hereafter called the Web). Between 1994 and 1996, the Web grew from 100 sites to 100,000 sites housing more than a million Web pages (Neubarth, 1996), and as of January, 1999, an electronic survey of web hosts found over 43 million sites (Network Wizards, 1999). Over 80% of America’s Fortune 500 companies have some type of Web presence (The Economist, 1997).

Web-Enabled Technologies Assessment and Management

During the past two decades, advances in computer technologies combined with telecommunication technologies have lead to the development of the Internet and its most popular application, the World Wide Web. Like many other technologies, the WWW has not been free of problems and challenges. A Delphi technique was utilized to assess a list of issues identified in the existing literature. In addition to this list, the panel of experts who participated in the Delphi study identified other critical issues and eventually ranked them in their order of priority and importance. The critical issue identified in this study provides closer insights into issues affecting the overall utilization and management of Web-enabled technologies and offers many implications and challenges for businesses, governments, and the user community.

Viability through Web-Enabled Technologies

It is often claimed that the Internet and associated technologies have paved the way for new types of businesses, new types of consumer behavior, and new types of services (cf. Cameron, 1996; Cronin, 1996; Laudon and Laudon, 1997). The emergence of virtual, office-less organizations, enabled by similar technologies, will—so it is said—profoundly affect both the way we work and the structure and culture of organizations (e.g., Ciborra and Suetens, 1996). Communication technologies and applications have led to the globalization of businesses, opening up new markets as well as new competition, even for small businesses (e.g., Sterne, 1995). The new technologies, brought together under the common denominator of web-enabled technologies (WETs), seem to offer great opportunities for those who recognize them, and severe threats for organizations that have awakened too late. Simultaneously, more deliberate voices call for caution. Anderson (1997, p. 5), for instance, asserts that “few companies are as yet making any money on-line, but plenty are trying.” He points out that this is only one example of the fact that “practically everything that was predicted about electronic commerce three years ago has turned out to be wrong” (ibid., p. 4). According to Anderson, it is a major mistake to equate the market potential of the Internet with its sheer size. Partly because of its size, “today’s Internet is, far from being a perfect market, the high street from hell” (ibid.). Such contradictory signals are bound to puzzle organizations and leave them struggling with questions like: “Could WETs significantly improve our current way of doing business?”; “Could these technologies enable us to define a new business model?” or “Is it just hype and should it better be ignored?” In short, organizations are struggling with questions concerning the usefulness of WETs applied to their own situation. In a sense, this is nothing new since similar questions arise every time a new form of information and communication technology (ICT) is launched. For WETs the need for organizations to address this issue, however, may be more imperative, because their impact on organizations seems to be extremely diverse, highly complex and cannot be compared so easily to that of earlier forms of ICT.

Electronic Commerce in Egypt

The information and communication technologies have had remarkable impacts worldwide on the emergence of a number of trends and applications affecting business, the industry and the economy. One of the vastly growing waves in today’s changing environment is electronic commerce. It is directly affecting the way people communicate, interact and do business. Electronic commerce currently represents 2% of the global business transactions but promises to dominate the business environment in the 21st century. The successful presence of electronic commerce through the Internet has helped create low cost and more efficient channels for product and service sales through a more dynamic and interactive venue of opportunities where the world becomes the market place. This chapter reflects on the ways business will be developed and formulated in the 21st century. As the world is converging into a global village where supply and demand interacts across nations and continents, electronic commerce represents an opportunity for many countries around the world. Egypt, one of the rapidly growing economies among the developing world has thoroughly invested in transforming its society to deal with the information-based global market economy of the coming century. Respectively, one of the associated technologies in business development and trading has been electronic commerce. With the introduction of the Internet since 1993 in Egypt, today there are around 250,000 Internet subscribers served by 50 Internet service providers and representing the starting point for a potential electronic commerce community. As the Internet grows in magnitude and capacity, electronic commerce will flourish and will have direct implications on the socioeconomic and business development process in Egypt. This chapter demonstrates Egypt’s vision with regard to electronic commerce and its possible utilization in its developmental and planning processes. Moreover, the chapter will demonstrate the roles of the government, the public and the private sector facing the challenges and opportunities enabled by electronic commerce, and how Egypt places the new enabled information and communication technologies as tools that can help in the nation’s development process.

Web-Based Competency and Training Management Systems for Distance Learning

The Web has had a major impact on how corporate training departments manage employee training. The evolution of computers and networks allows companies to implement a precise customer-focused approach. Through the use of competency and training management systems such as the SIGAL system used by Bell Canada, organizational training plans can be efficiently communicated throughout the organization, training needs can be linked to the performance evaluations of individual employees, and online training materials can be conveniently delivered to employees at their desktops. In the future, we predict that training management systems will evolve to incorporate analytic tools that can calculate the return on training investment, evaluate the impact of training on job performance, and determine the impact of training on corporate profits. This chapter discusses the value to companies of using a Web-based system for competency and training management, using the case of Bell Canada as an example of how companies are implementing these tools today.