User:PalviaWIT/sandbox

The World IT Project Objectives The world IT project (WIP) is designed to examine important issues for IT employees, both staff and management. The project is inspired by the research of Hofstede’s research on national culture and GLOBE project on culture and leadership. WIP utilizes data from different countries, with diverse cultures, levels of economic growth, societal and religious beliefs, and political systems. In early 2013, the core team deliberated and agreed on the core goals for the project. These include the examination of various •	IT employee issues, such as organizational IT issues, technology issues, and individual issues. •	Organizational IT issues like the roles of IT strategic planning, IT-business alignment, business process reengineering, security and privacy, and IT reliability and efficiency, to name a few, in the nature and experience of IT employment. •	Technology issues such as how cloud computing, social media, mobility, ERP systems, business intelligence, and big data, again to name just a few, are perceived by IT workers to influence their jobs. •	Individuals issues including job satisfaction, efficacy, and role ambiguity. For a deeper understanding of these, the context is important. Also examined will be contextual factors such as organizational variables (including structure and strategy), organizational culture, IT occupational culture, and national culture.

Background and History In 2003, at the GITMA World Conference1 (www.gitma.org) in Calgary, Canada, and then again in 2004 in San Diego, California, several IS colleagues shared their concerns about IS research in general and especially the key IS management issue studies published in the top IS journals. For example, two types of Information Systems issues have been tracked in the U.S. annually: organizational IT issues and technology issues (e.g., Kappelman, et al. 2020). While there have been fragmented and infrequent attempts to address issues in specific countries or regions (e.g., Ifinedo, 2006; Luftman et al., 2012; Watson, Kelly, Galliers, & Brancheau, 1997), no one had examined much of the world’s IT issues in any systematic or comprehensive manner. To improve the existing U.S.-centric or a Western-centric dominated view of existing research in information systems and information technology, the core team adopted the popular five dimensions of national culture by Hofstede and Hofstede (2004) to conduct the World IT Project. This was aimed at giving a global view that focuses on understanding the major IS issues in the world in the context of each country’s or region’s unique cultural, economic, political, religious, and societal environments.

Core Research Team 'Prashant Palvia' Prashant Palvia (pcpalvia@uncg.edu) is Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor, Bryan School of Business & Economics, at the University of North Carolina Greensboro and the Project Leader. He is Editor-in- Chief of Journal of Global Information Technology Management and an Associate Editor for Information & Management. He has published 126 articles in MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Information & Management, Decision Support Systems and other journals. Prashant has published six books, most recently as co-author of The World IT Project: Global Issues in Information Technology (World Scientific Publishing Company).

Jaideep Ghosh Jaideep Ghosh (jaideep.ghosh@snu.edu.in) is Professor of Decision Sciences, Operations Management, and Information Systems at the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Shiv Nadar University, India. His interests include social networks, data science and big data, system dynamics, financial modeling and econometrics. His work has been published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Sociological Methods & Research, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Journal of Production Research, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM), Social Indicators Research, Scientometrics and Journal of Mathematical Sociology, among others. He is an Associate Editor for JGITM.

Tim Jacks Tim Jacks (tjacks@siue.edu) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Management & Information Systems at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a founding member of the World IT Project research team. His research has been published in journals including Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, Information Technology & People, Information Technology & Management, Decision Support Systems and Business Process Management Journal. He is the Senior Editor at Journal of Global Information Technology Management.

Alexander Serenko Alexander Serenko (a.serenko@utoronto. ca) is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems in the Faculty of Business and IT, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. His PhD in Management Information Systems was awarded by McMaster University. His research interests are scientometrics, knowledge management, technology addiction and implicit cognitive processes. Alexander has published more than 90 articles in refereed journals, including MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, Communications of the ACM and Journal of Knowledge Management. His articles have received more than 8,500 citations.

Aykut Turan Aykut Hamit Turan (ahturan@sakarya.edu. tr) is a Professor at the University of Sakarya, Turkey. His research interests include global IT management, healthcare IT, IT acceptance and adoption, IT diffusion in SMEs, IT occupational culture, and key organizational, IT and cultural issues in different countries. His work has been published in journals including European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Global Information Technology Management (JGITM), Information & Management, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research and Communication of the ACM. He serves on the editorial board of JGITM.

Methodology: To complete the project, the steps below were followed as documented in Palvia et al. (2017). The first step of the World IT Project was the preparation of the standard survey instrument. Previously validated items were used to measure the constructs of the study. This ensured that the instrument had good psychometric properties. Pilot tests also helped the researchers to refine the instrument. Ultimately, the instrument contained 160 items. Although the instrument appeared to be long, all questions required the respondent to select one answer from a menu of options, and it could be completed in about 25 minutes. For example, majority of the questions required a selection on 1 to 5 scale, where 1 represented most importance and 5 represented no importance, or 1 represented strongly agree and 5 represented strongly disagree. The instrument was frozen at the end of 2013. As an exception and in special cases, country investigators (CIs) could add a few of their own questions. This was necessary to assure uniform data across all countries. The Institutional Review Board at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro approved and exempted the instrument from further review. The core team members and CIs also received approvals from their home Institutional Review Boards if necessary.

The core team members conducted the overall project and served as liaisons to individual country investigators (CIs) and provided them with support. Each country had its own team. Each country team generally had one to three CIs. In some cases, the researchers allowed four members per team. They solicited CIs through professional contacts and conferences, requests on the AISWorld listserv, and direct emails to faculty listed on the AIS faculty directory. They also organized information sessions at conferences, such as the GITMA and AMCIS conferences in 2013 and 2014, in order to attract country investigators. In each communication, the benefits to the CIs and their roles and responsibilities were described.

One of the primary goals of the project was to obtain data from major regions of the world and include countries that represent different cultures, economic status, religious beliefs, and political systems. The researchers needed local country investigators because they would understand the local culture and how to best approach local companies to participate. The CIs were also responsible for the translation/back-translation of the instrument to the local language, if necessary. As a result, the instrument has been translated into the following languages: Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish.

The CIs were given general direction and guidelines for collecting the data from IT employees in organizations. As they knew their situation best, they were given discretion in what specific method(s) they used to collect data and how to approach organizations in their country. The general guidelines included:

•	All respondents needed to be in the IT profession. •	Try to get a minimum usable sample size of 300 IT employees. •	Collect responses from 10 to 15 IT employees from 20 to 30 companies. •	Try to include a variety of industries. •	Assure complete anonymity in data collection.

Most countries exceeded the target sample size of 300. There are a few who fell short because of a variety of reasons; nevertheless, they decided to include them in our analysis.

Recommendations were made to the CIs on the actual data collection, e.g., mail surveys, face-to-face surveys, email surveys, Web-administered surveys, and going through the CEO/CIO or another senior executive to recruit multiple IT employees from the same organization. The CIs used the above methods, but also came up with their own innovative solutions to collect the data, e.g., hire a consulting company specializing in conducting surveys, have the surveys completed at industry conferences, and organize special events for the purpose. Many CIs used multiple methods to collect the data. The initial cutoff date for data collection was December 2016. However, given the enormity of the projects and challenges encountered in data collection, the date was extended to December 2017. The initial target of the researchers for the number of participating countries was 30, which they later increased to 40. The final count was 37 when they finished the data collection effort. Once the data collection was complete, the CIs were asked to code the data in an Excel file and send it to the core team. They were sent a coding template and instructions. The core team examined each country data both visually as well as applied statistical tests. The visual examinations looked for issues like missing data, same codes for all fields, out of range data, and similar codes across multiple records. Any anomalous records were deleted. For example, if the missing data was excessive, the entire record was deleted. If the row with missing data was retained, the missing data were replaced by the number 9. IBM SPSS 23 was used for statistical analysis. Statistical tests included construct reliability assessment. This was done both at country level and the entire data set level. Problems were flagged and will be accounted for in our future analysis. It is worthy of note that at least three country datasets were completely rejected, and the CIs were given the opportunity to collect the data all over again. Two of the countries complied. One did not and is not part of the 37 countries.

Participating Countries The study is survey based with participants from 37 countries from all over the world. Table 1. shows the list of countries participating in the World IT Project.

Current Publications A book on WIP has been published, titled “The World IT Project: Global Issues in Information Technology” ny NOW Publishers and is available on Amazon. Based on the project several research articles have been published and accepted as detailed in table 2 below: