Within the Information Systems literature, there has been an emerging interest in the use of formative measurement in structural equation modeling (SEM). This interest is exemplified by descriptions of the nature of formative measurement (e.g., Chin 1998a), and more recently the proper specification of formatively measured constructs (Petter et al. 2007) as well as application of such constructs (e.g., Barki et al. 2007). Formative measurement is a useful alternative to reflective measurement. However, there has been little guidance on interpreting the results when formative measures are employed. Our goal is to provide guidance relevant to the interpretation of formative measurement results through the examination of the following six issues: multicollinearity; the number of indicators specified for a formatively measured construct; the possible co-occurrence of negative and positive indicator weights; the absolute versus relative contributions made by a formative indicator; nomological network effects; and the possible effects of using partial least squares (PLS) versus covariance-based SEM techniques. We provide prescriptions for researchers to consider when interpreting the results of formative measures as well as an example to illustrate these prescriptions.
This research aims at improving our understanding of the concept of business competence of information technology professionals and at exploring the contribution of this competence to the development of partnerships between IT professionals and their business clients. Business competence focuses on the areas of knowledge that are not specifically IT-related. At a broad level, it comprises the organization-specific knowledge and the interpersonal and management knowledge possessed by IT professionals. Each of these categories is in turn inclusive of more specific areas of knowledge. Organizational overview, organizational unit, organizational responsibility, and IT-business integration form the organization-specific knowledge, while interpersonal communication, leadership, and knowledge networking form the interpersonal and management knowledge. Such competence is hypothesized to be instrumental in increasing the intentions of IT professionals to develop and strengthen the relationship with their clients. The first step in the study was to develop a scale to measure business competence of IT professionals. The scale was validated, and then used to test the model that relates competence to intentions to form IT-business partnerships. The results support the suggested structure for business competence and indicate that business competence significantly influences the intentions of IT professionals to develop partnerships with their business clients.
This research explores the concept of the information technology (IT) competence of business managers, defined as the set of IT-related explicit and tacit knowledge that a business manager possesses that enables him or her to exhibit IT leadership in his or her area of business. A manager's knowledge of technologies, applications, systems development, and management of IT form his or her explicit IT knowledge. This domain further extends to include knowing who knows what, which enables the manager to leverage the knowledge of others. Tacit IT knowledge is conceptualized as a combination of experience and cognition. Experience relates to personal computing, IT projects, and overall management of IT. Cognition refers to two mental models: the manager's process view and his or her vision for the role of IT. The outcomes expected from IT-competent business managers are chiefly two behaviors: an increased willingness to form partnerships with IT people and an increased propensity to lead and participate in IT projects.