Recently, many internet firms have opted the strategic alliances with other on/off-line firms in order to gain and sustain their competitive advantages. Previous research on market reaction to such alliances, however, shows mixed results. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the announcement effects of the alliances among internet firms in the stock market. Focusing on on-line firms that have been outside the scope of previous research, this study applied the event study methodology and examined the cumulative abnormal returns(CAR) for 245 alliance announcements between October 1998 and May 2002. Further, this study conducted a survey to categorize various types of announcements and 40 usable returns has been analyzed. The notable results from this study include: 1) The strategic alliances announcements do not have statistically positive effects on stock prices of the announcing firms. 2) Contrary to the results of the previous research, the CARs associated with marketing alliances are higher than those with technology alliances. 3) The degree of fitness among firms' disposition, their alliance purpose, and alliance type chosen influences the performance of their alliances.

This paper proposes an empirical evidence about contextual factors which determine perceived business performances of small firms resulted from IT investment. In this paper, small firms are defined as firms of which total employees are below fifty. These small firms account for 95% of total number of private companies in Korea. We used a perceived IT performance model based on Balanced Scorecard framework to evaluate IT performance of small firms. And data were collected by Web and e-mail survey method with multiple screening. Statistical results show that business performance of small firms are differentiated in terms of firm size, location, longevity, age of owner, education level of owner, while industry sector, profitability, sex of owner don't make significant differences.

Recently, a market size for IT outsourcing has grown. As internet technology has been developed for accessing information resources, information systems have become internet-based, which is called an ASP(Application Service Provider); evaluating the performance for ASP becomes important. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the salient characteristics of ASP. An ASP success model is proposed based on information systems success models found in the literature. Our model is tested through a survey from 291 small companies. LISREL is used to demonstrate the suitability of our model, and the success factors for ASP are also investigated. Our result is likely to help provide useful guidelines for the successful ASP implementations.

Even though B2B EC is becoming popular, there have been not so much studies about performance evaluation methodology for B2B systems. In this paper, after analyzing buyer-carts systematically focusing on the buyer's interactional efforts on the typical buying processes of each buyer-cart, we propose a quantitative performance evaluation model. For this, we categorize buyer-carts in B2B EC as s-cart, i-cart, and b-cart depending upon its residing sites: seller, intermediary, and buyer sites. And after proposing the desired features of buyer-carts in B2B EC as identification, collection, trashing, ordering, payment, tracking, recording, purchasing decision support, and transmission of records to e-procurement systems, we derive a performance evaluation model by calculating detail sub-processes from the desired features' viewpoints. By setting variables from a survey on the actual condition of using buyer-carts in companies in Korea, we try to evaluate the performance of buyer-carts in B2B EC. In this paper, we suggest a new methodology of performance evaluation for B2B systems, and show that the b-cart platform is more efficient than other buyer-carts especially in B2B EC.

As a part of ebXML(Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language) framework, BPSS(Business Process Specification Schema) has been provided to support the direct specification of the set of elements required to configure a runtime system in order to execute a set of ebXML business transactions. The BPS,' is available in two stand-alone representations, a UML version and an XML version. Due to the limitations of UML notations and XML syntax, however, current ebXML BPSS specification fails to specify formal semantic constraints completely. In this study, we propose a constraint classification scheme for the BPSS specification and describe how to formally represent those semantic constraints using OCL(Object Constraint Language). As a way to validate p Business Process Specification(BPS) with the formal semantic constraints, we suggest a rule-based approach to represent the formal constraints and demonstrate its detailed mechanism for applying the rule-based constraints to the BPS with a prototype implementation.

User satisfaction has been widely used by information system(IS) researchers as the most appropriate surrogate variable for the systems success since Bailey and Pearson(1983) provided their user satisfaction measurement. Because user satisfaction is a perceived performance measure by users, not a real or objective measure for systems success, however, perceived user satisfaction by users may not be exactly identical with the real systems performance. In this regard, if the user's ultimately perceived satisfaction is different from the real systems performance, we need to investigate why these two measures are different and which factors may cause the difference. From the perspective of disconfirmation of user expecations, this study examined why user satisfaction and real systems performance may not be identical each other. Expectaion-disconfirmation theory which has had a central role in marketing in explaining the effects of expectation and disconfirmation on consumer satisfaction was similarly adopted in this study to explain the role of expectation and disconfirmation in user satisfaction in the IS environment. Based on the expectation-disconfirmation theory, the current study developed a research model to examine the effects of expectation, system performance, and disconfirmation on user satisfaction in particular. Six research hypotheses derived from the research model were empirically tested using the partial least squares(PLS) method. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that the effects of system performance and disconfirmation were fairly strong on user satisfaction, while the user's expectation has shown insignificant influences on user satisfaction.

Knowledge management has been increasingly recognized as important in business management context. Although knowledge management has been proposed as an enabler to reach competitive advantage, little research has considered applying knowledge to business decision-making activities, which may be the main task of enterprise management. The application of knowledge to decision-making has a more significant impact on organizational performance than mere knowledge management for operational level processing. For this purpose, the present study proposes a decision support loop based on the integration of knowledge by adopting a cognitive modeling approach. The proposed model is then discussed, in the real context of an application case.

Management is under constant pressures to achieve competitiveness in production in most manufacturing companies. The adoption of management techniques(MT) such as TQM, MRP, ERP and so on has been a logical response for better performance to many companies. Besides, these companies commonly adopt a number of such techniques with high expectation for performance improvement. However, expected improvement in performance is not guaranteed unless necessary ingredients exist for those techniques. Many research studies have focused on the nature of successful adoption of management techniques in the past. However, most studies have been related to a single technique and its effects. When more than one techniques are in use in a company, focusing on a single technique limits the value of analysis. This paper focuses the value of MTs adopted in a company in multiplicity and compares the relative characteristics of MTs one another. Especially, the purpose of this paper is to examine the comparative nature of MTs adopted In manufacturing companies and the elements of MT success in relationship with information systems and organizational adjustment for adoption of MTs. The result of the analysis shows that the more efforts are exhorted for the adjustment of information systems and organizational structures to accommodate the MTs, the more success from the adopted techniques results. However, the extent of adjustment for different management techniques differs one another due to the nature of each technique. With regard to the comparative impact of adjustment of information systems and that of organizational structures, the result shows that the latter has more direct and greater impact than the former.

This paper focused on developing and empirically testing an EAM(Electronic-Store Acceptance Model), By basing upon Davis' TAM(Technology Acceptance Model) and reflecting the characteristics of EC(Electronic Commerce), the EAM was proposed. This EAM could be regarded as a revised and extended TAM in the EC area. The theoretical rationale of this model was as following: 1) Though Davis' TAM was proposed a powerful tool to explain and predict usage of Information Technology, nowadays, TAM variables(perceived usefulness and ease of use) are posited as key drivers of e-commerce acceptance. 2) In the e-commerce and e-business studies, trust has been emerging as a potentially important antecedent of IT adoption. A famous internet book store was chosen to empirically test the EAM. In order to evaluate reliability and validity of instrument, and validate the research model, SEM(Structured equation model) analysis was conducted. The results showed that perceived usefulness and trust significantly influenced e-Store Acceptance but perceived ease of use did not have significant influence on e-Store Acceptance.

The purpose of this study is to propose and test a model of customer retention in Internet shopping malls when switching barriers and comprehensive customer value exist in terms of economic and experiential aspects. The literature about customer retention propose that switching barriers are important factors other than satisfaction influencing customers' intention to remain with a specific supplier. The switching barriers mean anything that makes customers' defection difficult or costly and are consisted of perceived switching costs, attractiveness of alternatives and virtual relationships. The Customer Value Scale by Mathwick(2001) is applied to this study as economic value, shopping efficiency, service excellence, aesthetic appeal and playfulness(Zeithaml, 1988; Holbrook, 1994). The analyses showed partial support for the affirmative effect of customer values and switching costs and full support for the affirmative Influence of satisfaction on repurchase intention in the Internet shopping mall environment. But the attractiveness of alternatives and virtual relationship did not have a significant Influence like the result of Jones(1998)'s study of the service industry.