Procrastination is the tendency to postpone an activity under one's control to the last possible minute, or even not to perform it at all. This study examines procrastination regarding completion of various parts of a task, each of which has a different deadline. Whereas from an attention economy perspective it may be better to complete all the parts at the earliest deadline, the human tendency to procrastinate results in a delay of the parts that have a later deadline. Data was collected at an online discussion board about the behavior of 120 MBA students. Their assignment included an individual part with a specific deadline for each student and a collaborative part that the students had to complete by the end of the semester. The findings suggest that usually students tended to perform their individual task on time, even when the assignment was voluntary. However, the collaborative part of the assignment was delayed to the last three weeks of the semester when the assignment was compulsory and was not completed at all when it was voluntary. The paper discusses the implications of the findings regarding effective time management of collaborative tasks in online environments.

Keeping learners engaged in viewing online video lectures is a challenge, which is considered harder as the length of the video is longer. Although it is a known obstacle, in practice, many videos are lengthy and do not contain interactive elements. This study takes an attention economy perspective, and examines if interactivity may enable effective use of longer online video lectures. Google Analytics data was used to measure average online video lecture viewing completion percentage for two ‘long’ and ‘short’ video lecture groups, before and after the addition of interactive components. Preliminary results show that addition of interactivity significantly improved completion percentage as well as average viewing time for both ‘long’ and ‘short’ video lecture groups by more than 20%. Furthermore, the average viewing time of the ‘long’ group grew to over 10 minutes. The contributions of this study are twofold: it demonstrates the potential of learning analytics to identify ways to improve learning processes, and it provides empirical support for the potential of adding interactive elements to the videos to expand the attention span of learners.

Recently, learning technologies have become a pivotal constituent of teaching–learning processes. Contemporary studies indicate that in order to effectively utilize these technologies, instructors and learners alike must master a range of cognitive and socio‐emotional competencies, commonly termed “digital literacy competencies” or “21st century skills.” This study employs a content analysis methodology to trace trends of change in the research of core digital literacy competencies as reflected in the educational academic literature of the past 37 years (1980–2016). Based on well‐established frameworks of digital literacy competencies, this research examined seven skills: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical thinking, Information literacy, Problem‐solving and Socio‐emotional skills. Data were collected through advanced search queries of peer‐reviewed publications in the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. Findings reveal that among the examined terms, Communication is the most prominent digital literacy skill, followed by Problem Solving and Collaboration. Furthermore, within the context of Skills, the most prominent terms are Information Literacy and Critical thinking; Technology and Collaboration are least mentioned. Our findings suggest that awareness of digital learning competencies in educational research literature is marginal, implying that educational research seems to lag behind the need to understand the ever‐changing digital competencies that instructors and learners need.

Interorganizational systems (IOS) may provide substantial benefits, however many organizations are reluctant to implement them. This empirical research takes a novel approach and develops a model of IOS feasibility, which is based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC). It introduces the notion of maximal infeasibility, which is the highest among the values of five factors: economic infeasibility, organizational infeasibility, technological infeasibility, risks, and lack of financial resources. The highest value was selected because implementation is hindered even if only one of the feasibility requirements is not fulfilled. Data collected from 139 medium and large Israeli business organizations validated the model, and indicated that strategic motivation is the main driving force for an organization to initiate or to join an IOS, while the main barriers are organizational infeasibility issues such as lack of management support or uninterested potential partners. Adopting a TOC approach to IOS implementation may assist organizations to overcome these obstacles and increase the chance of a successful implementation.

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Academic institutions invest considerable resources in improving the website quality of their MBA courses, in the hope of increasing student retention and willingness to recommend the programs to others. Despite this investment, it seems that the old "keep it simple" rule is also true for e-learning. Data collected from students enrolled in a blended distance learning MBA program at the Open University of Israel, shows that the students were most satisfied with the simple and relatively inexpensive e-learning tools, which did not require their active participation. The paper discusses bounded rationality and attention economy as suggested theoretical explanations for this phenomenon, as well as practical implications for academic institutions and educators.

Information overload is one of the major challenges of management in the information age. Usually, the emphasis in the literature is on incoming information, whereas the creation of information or data is rarely discussed. This paper presents the measurement paradox and demonstrates how managerial decisions, or monitoring conventions, cause collection of tremendous amounts of unnecessary data. The measurement paradox is observed when advanced technologies, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, which are intended to improve control and provide managers with better information, collect ample data, most of which are unnecessary.The paper illustrates the measurement paradox by developing a model for estimating the amount of data required for a cost accounting system. It analyzes the amount of data necessary for traditional cost accounting systems, which are usually based on one cost driver, mostly direct labor hours, versus the amount of data used by activity-based costing (ABC) systems, which use multiple cost drivers. It shows that the amount of data depends mainly on the number of measurements, and in order to improve managerial accounting systems and eliminate non-value adding activities, one should reduce the number of measurements.

Online forum assignments are one of the main tools for collaborative learning. This study examines the impact of compulsory submission on the effectiveness of forum assignments. It compares the grades of 120 MBA students who studied an advanced elective course in a blended distance learning university during the years 2005-2009. Some students were required to participate in a forum assignment and their submissions were graded, whereas other students were similarly asked to participate in a forum assignment but their work was not graded. The findings suggest that the benefits of optional forum assignments are marginal, whereas compulsory forum assignments may improve student performance. The main theoretical contribution of this study is the indication that although the students had a task-oriented attitude and were not engaged in social interaction with regard to the forum assignment, compulsory posting of the assignment on the discussion board, improved their performance. Practically, the findings suggest that publishing student assignments on a course website may improve assignments' quality and therefore enhance student performance, even if there is no further collaboration or social interaction. This finding is important since creating meaningful collaboration in online environments requires considerable instructors' efforts in moderating the discussion.