Mobile banking is an emerging application of mobile commerce that could become an additional revenue source to both banks and telecom service providers. It is a form of service convergence enabled by innovative technologies. Despite the alleged benefits of mobile banking, its acceptance has been short of industry expectations. One plausible explanation may be consumers' initial lack of trust in available services. The objective of our research is to reveal the mechanisms associated with the initial formation of people's trust in mobile banking and intention to use the service. For this, we attempt to understand the effect of four antecedent variables (structural assurances, relative benefits, personal propensity to trust and firm reputation) on shaping a person's initial trust in mobile banking and its usage intention. They represent four types of trust-inducing forces: institutional offering (structural assurances), cognition (perceived benefits), personality (personal propensity) and firm characteristics (firm reputation). We examine individual significance of the selected antecedents and also their comparative reliability in explaining the two exogenous variables. The technical basis of our empirical research is the innovative mobile banking solution that uses cellphones with a built-in smart chipset. The survey data are analyzed using structural equation modelling. The analysis showed that three variables (relative benefits, propensity to trust and structural assurances) had a significant effect on initial trust in mobile banking. Also, the perception of initial trust and relative benefits was vital in promoting personal intention to make use of related services. However, contrary to our expectation, the reputation as a firm characteristics variable failed to attract people to mobile banking.

Research ArticleMore and more publications are highlighting the value of IT in affecting business processes. Recognizing firmlevel dynamic capabilities as key to improved firm performance, our work examines and empirically tests the influencing relationships among IT capabilities (IT personnel expertise, IT infrastructure flexibility, and IT management capabilities), process-oriented dynamic capabilities, and financial performance. Processoriented dynamic capabilities are defined as a firm's ability to change (improve, adapt, or reconfigure) a business process better than the competition in terms of integrating activities, reducing cost, and capitalizing on business intelligence/learning. They encompass a broad category of changes in the firm's processes, ranging from continual adjustments and improvements to radical one-time alterations. Although the majority of changes may be incremental, a firm's capacity for timely changes also implies its readiness to execute radical alterations when the need arises. Grounded on the theoretical position, we propose a research model and gather a survey data set through a rigorous process that retains research validity. From the analysis of the survey data, we find an important route of causality, as follows: IT personnel expertise  IT management capabilities  IT infrastructure flexibility  process-oriented dynamic capabilities  financial performance. Based on this finding, we discuss the main contributions of our study in terms of the strategic role of IT in enhancing firm performance.

No abstract

No abstract

The use of formative measurement in the field of Information Systems has increased, arguably due to statistical tools (e.g., PLS) that can test such models. However, in the literature, there exist two contradictory views on the potential deficiency of formative measurement. While opponents who are critical of formative measurement argue that there are native weaknesses of the formative approach in model estimation, propo-1 Joe Valacich was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Traci Carte served as the associate editor. nents who are in favor of using formative measurement counter that opponents' research methods in measurement model specification are flawed. The goal of this work is to empirically test these opposing views on whether the alleged estimation instability of formative measurement is due to measurement model misspecification or simply the shortcoming of formative measurement. To assess the integrity of arguments of both parties, we adopt a research design in which four different cases are tested in terms of interpretational confounding and external consistency. We find that regardless of whether there is a specification issue, formative measures can lead to misleading outcomes. Based on the results, we offer guidelines that researchers may adopt in planning and executing data analysis with structural equation modeling. Given that the use of formative measurement is at a critical juncture in the IS field, we believe that the guidelines in this research note are important to promote appropriate use of the approach rather than relegate it to a bandwagon effect.