This article develops and empirically tests a research framework that models the role of technological, organizational, and environmental factors in organizational intention toward using e-procurement systems. The partial least square analysis of survey data from 211 firms in China demonstrates that technological factors including perceived efficiency benefits and perceived ease, organizational factors including business to business commerce expertise, information sharing culture, and top management support, and an environmental factor, business partner pressure, shape in different ways organizational intention to adopt and to continue with e-procurement. The findings of the study not only offer valuable insights for stimulating the diffusion of e-procurement systems but also provide important guidance to systems vendors in strategizing their marketing campaigns and focusing limited resources on relevant strategic components.

Business simulation gaming has been around for quite a few years. The pedagogical and, more recently, the assessment value of gaming has been recognized and accepted in many circles. Many functional and total enterprise gaming exercises have been used in various business courses. Over the year, as technology has improved, simulation exercises have become more sophisticated and user friendly. The student can now concentrate on the content and learning in the gaming exercise without getting too diverted by the mechanics of playing the game. With the advent of the Internet an added dimension of convenience is now available. Using the World Wide Web (WWW) is a natural extension of making simulation games more powerful and the access more convenient. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the World Wide Web, which is accessible today from any home computer connected to the Internet, it behooves academics to explore and take advantage of this technology. This article delineates one such implementation that makes the entire game available on the Web. The game has been in continuous use for the past 3 years. The various components of the game and how the programming languages Practical Extraction and Reporting Language (PERL) and JavaScript can provide the functionality for making the game available on the Internet are described.

Purpose – The main aim of this paper is to investigate the potential of Cloud Computing as a multilayer integrative collaboration space for knowledge acquisition, nurturing and sharing. The paper will pinpoint benefits and challenges of Cloud Computing in satisfying the new techno-sociological requirements of the knowledge society through the provision of information technology (IT) green services. Furthermore, the article calls for the engagement of researchers to generate additional discussion and dialog in this emerging and challenging area. Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies a conceptual analysis to explore the utilization of the Cloud ecosystem as a new platform for knowledge management (KM) technologies characterized by environmental and economic benefits. Findings – This paper reveals the emergence of a new layer in the Cloud stack known as Knowledge Management-as-a-Service. The article discusses how KM has the opportunity to evolve in synergy with Cloud Computing technologies using the modified Metcalfe’s law, while simultaneously pursuing other benefits. This research reveals that if Cloud Computing is successfully deployed, it will contribute to the efficient use of the under-utilized computing resources and enable a low carbon economy. However, challenges such as security, information overload and legal issues must be addressed by researchers before Cloud Computing becomes the de facto KM platform. Originality/value – While the technical, legal and environmental complications of Cloud Computing have received the attention warranted, the KM concepts and implementation facets within the realm of the knowledge society have not yet received adequate consideration. This paper provides enterprise KM architects, planners, chief information officers (CIOs) and chief knowledge officers (CKOs) with a comprehensive review of the critical issues, many of which are often overlooked or treated in a fragmented manner within the Cloud environment.

The importance of proper management of projects has not gone unrecognized in industry and academia. Consequently, tools like the Critical Path Method (CPM) and the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) for project planning have been the focus of attention of both practitioners and researchers. Determination of the Time to Complete the Job (TCJ) in PERT networks is important for planning and bidding purposes. The complexity involved in accurately determining the TCJ has led to the development of many approximating procedures. Most of them ignore the dependence between paths in the network. We propose an approximation to determine the TCJ which explicitly recognizes this dependency. Dependency in networks arises due to commonality of activities among various paths in the network. We develop an approximation which is simple to use and makes use of readily available tables. Also, the approximation employs the traditional concept of the critical path which is easy to understand and to operationalize. The activities on the critical paths are divided into an independent portion and a dependent portion. The dependent portion comprises activities common to various critical paths. Order statistics are used in computing the time for the dependent portion of the critical path. We present the theoretical underpinnings of our approach and illustrate its application via an example. In the absence of other measures, we use simulation results as a proxy for the TCJ and as a benchmark to measure the accuracy of our approximation. Empirical results are obtained for a variety of networks in the literature. We show that the distribution of the TCJ is better approximated by a mixture of distributions. Comparison with other approaches from the literature indicates that our approximation yields estimates for the TCJ which are closer to the simulation results.

The authors considered two principles of simulation design (simple rules and smart algorithms) and three essential attributes (choice of industries, employer-employee relationships, and real markets for products and participant services) for strategic management business simulations. They applied these considerations and a constructivist approach to develop a computer-assisted simulation, using it to investigate the concurrent and predictive relationships of market share and production experience on profitability. The authors found that the relationships are (a) as expected and stronger than those reported in an earlier study using a simulation of a more conventional design and (b) more consistent with a well-known series of field studies. They suggest that computer-assisted simulations developed through a constructivist approach may be used to advance the discipline of strategic management.

This article reports on two studies that were conducted to determine whether (a) total enterprise simulations are suitable for assessing business skills and (b) the tournament concept can be effectively applied to such simulations. The first study involved 141 senior business students; the second, 74. The results are consistently favorable on both questions. The studies also show that the free-rider problem that may have previously undermined the validity of simulation performance scores can be overcome by incorporating a system of individual performance scores, and that a progressively difficult simulation experience can keep participants challenged for 30 decision periods.

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