This exploratory case study examined the effects of end-to-end participation by business experts as core members of a development team for a large-scale project in a major commercial bank. Results show that strong influence by business experts was achieved through their execution of a series of key tasks ranging from system planning, requirements modeling, data modeling, to all but unit tests, which typically were done by developers, in addition to joint design with the developers. From a control theory perspective, business experts¡¯ influence evolved and got reinforced over three stages, in which they first defined the outcome, then ensured the realization of the desired outcome via joint design with the developers, and lastly measured the outcome and orchestrated the system rollout. Although the business experts were not endowed with the capability for outcome control and behavior control, they gradually developed and strengthened it through extensive do-it-yourself and learning-by-doing.

Ji-Ye Mao is a Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Business, Renmin University of China. Previously, he was a tenured professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a Visiting Fellow at the City University of Hong Kong. His areas of research include user participation in the design and implementation of information systems, human-computer interaction (HCI), and IT outsourcing management. He was a recipient of the National Outstanding Youth in Science Grant in China, and Beijing Distinguished University Teacher award. He has published over 60 papers in leading journals and academic conferences. He is on the editorial board of several international journals including the Journal of Database Management, Journal of AIS (Association for Information Systems), Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, and Information & Management. He has served in program committees for conferences such as ICIS¡¯ 2007 (International Conference on Information Systems). He holds a Ph.D in MIS from the University of British Columbia (1995), MBA from McGill University (1987), and B.Eng from Renmin University of China (1985).

Title: Corporate Governance and Returns on Information Technology Investment: Evidence from an Emerging Market
Xin Xu, Associate Professor,School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University,China .
Abstract:

Prior studies have reported mixed findings on the impact of corporate information technology (IT) investment on firm performance. This study investigates the effect of corporate governance, an important management-control mechanism, on the IT investment-firm performance relation in the Taiwanese electronics industry. Specifically, we explore board independence and foreign ownership, which have increasingly become salient factors concerning corporate governance in emerging markets. We address their roles across firms of different sizes and in industries where degrees of competitiveness run a wide gamut. Our results show a positive moderating effect of board independence on the IT investment-firm performance relation, especially when competition intensifies. Furthermore, we find that the greater the foreign ownership in small firms, the more positive the IT investment-firm performance relation, suggesting that foreign investors may bring IT expertise to help small firms reap the benefits of using IT.
Keywords: IT investment; board independence; foreign ownership; firm performance; firm size; industry competitiveness

Sean Xin Xu (ÐìÐÄ) is an Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. His current research interests include IT value under different corporate governance structures, post-adoptive behaviors of IT use, social media, enterprise systems and information risk, and IT use in supply chain contexts. His papers have been published in Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of MIS, European Journal of Information Systems, and Strategic Management Journal. He was nominated for the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in 2009. He won the Vernon Zimmerman Best Paper Award at the Asian-Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues in 2007, two Best Paper Awards at ICIS in 2002 and 2003, and a Best Paper Award (International Track) at the 2004 Americas¡¯ Conference on Information Systems.

Title: Exploring the Dynamic Process of Multi-channel Strategy: An Internal Transfer Perspective
Yaobin Lu, Professor of Information Management at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology(HUST)),China.
Abstract:

Customer continued use or ¡°customer continuance¡± is crucial to the firm¡¯s survival and success. The extant customer continuance related studies mainly focused on continued use, repeated use in the context of a single product or a single channel. Little related research has found from the multi-product and multi-channel perspective. In this paper, we classified eight types of customer continuance related internal transfer process (ITP), and theorized a model of the Multi-channel strategy ITP based on the expectation-disconfirmation theory. Ten research hypotheses derived from this model are empirically validated using a web-based survey of 376 banking users. The results indicate that offline banking usage significant influence intention to use online banking. More specifically, the influence process acts based on the dedication and constrain mechanism, and different users have different transfer routes through this process.

Yaobin Lu is a Professor of Information Management at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology£¨HUST£©, China. He visited HEC at the University of Montreal for a research and teaching exchange during 2000. He was also a visiting scholar at Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota during 2003-2004. His research focuses on business models, online trust, and m-commerce. His research has appeared in Information Systems Journal, Computers in Human Behavior, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, International Journal of Information Management, Information System Management, and other journals. He has served as Editor Broad of Information & Management.