Shea-Tinn Yeh, Zhiping Walter
College & Research Libraries,Vol. 77, Issue 6,
With the development of digital technologies, various disruptive innovations have emerged that are gradually replacing academic libraries in the information-seeking process. As academic libraries become less relevant to their users, it is imperative that they develop strategies to respond to disruption. We highlight the fact that the service mission of academic libraries is in alignment with service innovation and propose that academic libraries respond to disruption by accelerating service innovation. Applying the Resources-Processes-Values framework, we recommend that, to facilitate service innovation, high-level administrators become innovation leaders, foster an innovation-supportive culture, tie performance evaluations and rewards to innovation outcomes, and create dedicated innovation teams with high levels of decision-making autonomy. We also recommend that academic libraries involve their users and build partnerships with other libraries and with commercial communities to bring about service innovation necessary to respond to disruption.

Zhiping Walter, and Melissa Succi Lopez
Decision Support Systems, Vol. 46 Issue 1, p. 206-215

Physician acceptance of clinical information technology (IT) is important for its successful implementation. We propose that perceived threat to professional autonomy is a salient outcome belief affecting physician acceptance of an IT. In addition, level of knowledge codification of an IT is an important technological context affecting physician acceptance. Data from a sample of U.S. physicians were collected to test the hypotheses using partial least squares analysis. Results show that perceived threat to professional autonomy has a significant, negative direct influence on perceived usefulness of an IT and on intention to use that IT. Level of knowledge codification is also an important variable. The effect of perceived threat to professional autonomy is larger for clinical decision support systems than for electronic medical records systems. Awareness of these results would help managers better manage IT implementation in health care settings.

Walter, Zhiping & Scott, George
Communications of the ACM Vol. 49, Issue 3, p. 87-91

Both rapid development and the ways they are used make managing Internet/Web systems different from managing traditional computer systems. Understanding the differences is important for developing and managing these systems

Rummel, Jeffrey L.; Walter, Zhiping; Dewan, Rajiv; & Seidmann, Abraham
European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 161 Issue 3, p. 683-703

There is a long history of modeling projects to meet time and cost objectives. Most of these models look at adjusting the level of resources available to the project in order to crash the time required to complete certain activities. These models usually take the activities and the graph structure of the project as given and fixed, but in practice there is often significant discretion in how activities are defined. This is especially important when there are information flows and time delays associated with the hand-off between an activity and its successor. This paper models the choice of how to meet the time and cost objectives through combining multiple activities into one while maintaining the original activity precedence relationships. A mixed-integer linear programming model is developed for the problem, and an implicit enumeration and a tabu search heuristic are tested with a suite of problem examples.

Alok Gupta, Bo-chiuan Su and Zhiping Walter
Decision Support Systems Vol. 38, Issue 3, Pages 347-367

This paper develops an economic model that captures consumer shopping channel choices based on shopping channel characteristics and consumer risk profiles – risk-neutral or risk-averse. Analyses of results show that after making purchases through one channel, electronic or traditional, risk-averse consumers tend to be more loyal customers than risk-neutral consumers. Further, the two types of consumers may exhibit split channel behavior – risk-neutral consumers prefer one channel and risk-averse consumers prefer the other. However, risk-neutral consumers are not always more likely to prefer electronic channel than risk-averse consumers. Implications for retailer pricing strategies are discussed.

Gupta, Alok; Bo-chiuan Su and Walter, Zhiping
International Journal of Electronic Commerce Vol. 8 Issue 3, p131-161

This paper examines the relationship between purchase decisions and channel-switching intentions. A theoretical model that explains channel-switching intentions was tested with a sample of 337 consumers. The results show a 52 percent tendency to switch from off-line to on-line across four product categories: books, airline tickets, wine, and stereo systems. The order of the switching tendency was consistent with the products’ search and experience attributes. Logistic regression analysis across product categories shows that differences in channel-risk perceptions, price-search intentions, evaluation effort, and waiting time have a significant impact on consumer switching from off-line to on-line shopping. Consumers who purchase on-line perceive significantly lower channel risk, search effort, evaluation effort, and waiting (delivery) time on-line than off-line and express significantly higher price-search intentions on-line than off-line. Consumers attracted to off-line channels also perceive lower search-cost and higher price-search intentions on-line than off-line, but their perceived on-line search effort and price-search intentions are significantly lower than for consumers attracted to on-line channels. These results support the important influence of the examined factors on channel switching. They also suggest that demographics may not be an effective basis for market segmentation.