1,720,965 research outputs found
E-commerce adoption by Malaysian SMEs
Get PDFE-commerce adoption among SMEs has been much discussed in management information technology and technological innovation literature. However, most of these prior studies focused mainly on e-commerce awareness or factors that influence e-commerce adoption. This study, on the other hand, attempts to develop a holistic insight into e-commerce adoption by SMEs. It investigates why some SMEs adopt e-commerce readily, and others do not. In addition, this study investigates the appropriateness of government support for SMEs encouraging them to adopt e-commerce. There is very little research that assesses e-commerce adoption by SMEs, certainly none as extensive as this, and there is also very limited empirical investigation of government support for SMEs to adopt e-commerce. This study helps to fill this gap by exploring these issues relating to e-commerce and SMEs. The framework model proposed in this study was developed out of an integration of various perspectives using the technological innovation literature, specifically the DOl and TOE frameworks. This model considers internal factors (the demographic characteristics of managers and their organisations), external factors (particularly government support), and reasons for, benefits of, and inhibitors to e-commerce adoption. Data for this study were collected through a questionnaire survey of over three thousand SMEs in Malaysia and forty face-to- face semi-structured interviews with SME managers and government officials . ., Results show there is a low level of adoption of e-commerce by SME managers whether or not they received government e-commerce supports. E-commerce usage hardly extends beyond e-mail. Online buying and complex websites, such as websites with online ordering and online payment facility are not common. Websites are used to provide contact details and information about the firm and information about its goods and services only, without displaying prices. The SME and SME manager demographic characteristics show significant association with e-commerce adoption. Two important factors that facilitate e- commerce adoption emerge from these characteristics namely SME location and the manager's experience of living abroad. To encourage e-commerce adoption, SMEs in developing countries need not only to have appropriate technology infrastructure installed, but also to be in a location with good public transportation services and efficient delivery methods. SME managers also need experience of buying and selling on the Internet, which they might gain while living abroad. The interviews raise a number of questions about the effectiveness of government support programmes, and the ulterior motives of SMEs. The benefits of e-commerce are more often perceived than achieved. Interestingly, the reason that SMEs adopt e-commerce is to enhance company image, rather than its efficiency. From the research findings, a series of recommendations for e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Malaysia emerges, providing guidance for policymakers, practitioners, and academics. Many recommendations, such as the need to evaluate e-commerce initiatives, may perhaps be extended to government K'T policies in the developing world as a whole. The study exposes many gaps, often overlooked, between the rhetoric of e-commerce adoption and the reality. The model proposed in this study may be comprehensive for e-commerce adoption in firms. Future research can build on and extend the proposed integrated model by including other potential factors from different contexts. It will be helpful to explore other statistical analysis, either in the current model or in an enhanced one. The findings will help towards a better understanding for firms and government and suggest a quantitative basis for them to determine favourable policies and conditions for expanding their e-commerce. This study provides the impetus for future research on many issues.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
E-commerce adoption issues in Malaysian SMES
Get PDFE-commerce is said to convey undisputed benefits to companies everywhere, reshaping customer and supplier relationships, streamlining business processes and even restructuring whole industries. Managers are told that e-commerce will give a tremendous boost to their companies, that businesses not involved in e-commerce will be left
behind in the global marketplace.Yet, e-commerce is not being adopted readily by SMEs. In fact, some studies claim that trading online by SMEs in some countries is stalling.Not many SMEs are keen to go online and only a few have websites.Drawing on existing research on ICT diffusion by SMEs, this paper explores e-commerce adoption by SMEs
in Malaysia.It highlights preliminary findings from explorative telephone interviews with the SME managers.The main findings are that SMEs embrace e-commerce mainly because of pressure from customers.They also seek to improve company image, communications, information flow and contact with government.But many have no better reason for adopting e-commerce than that it is ‘nice to have’.Barriers to adoption include lack of technical knowledge and the failure rate of peers. Many think of e-commerce as ‘fancy stuff’, irrelevant to their sort of business.Implications are discussed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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