[AISWorld] Contents of JAIS, Volume 13, Issue 9 (September)

Gregor, Shirley shirley.gregor at anu.edu.au
Wed Sep 26 23:27:43 EDT 2012


Contents of Volume 13, Issue 9 (September) Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) Official Publication of the Association for Information Systems

Published: Monthly Electronically
ISSN: 1536-9323
Published by the Association for Information Systems, Atlanta, USA http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/

Editor-in-Chief: Professor Shirley Gregor, The Australian National University, Australia

PAPER ONE
Ontological Clarity, Cognitive Engagement, and Conceptual Model Quality Evaluation: An Experimental Investigation By Simon K. Milton, Jayantha Rajapakse, and Ron Weber

Abstract
When analysts build information systems, they document their understanding of users’ work domains via conceptual models. Once a model has been developed, analysts should then check it has no defects. The literature provides little guidance about approaches to improve the effectiveness of conceptual model quality evaluation work. In this light, we propose a theory in which two factors have a material impact on the effectiveness of conceptual model quality evaluation work: (a) the ontological clarity of the conceptual models prepared, and (b) the extent to which analysts use a quality evaluation method designed to cognitively engage stakeholders with the semantics of the domain represented by a conceptual model. We tested our theory using an experiment involving forty-eight expert data modeling practitioners. Their task was to find as many defects as possible in a conceptual model. Our results showed that participants who received the conceptual model with greater ontological clarity on average detected more defects. However, participants who were given a quality evaluation method designed to cognitively engage them more with the semantics of the domain did not detect more defects. Nonetheless, during our analysis of participants’ protocols, we found that those who manifested higher levels of cognitive engagement with the model detected more defects. Thus, we believe that our treatment for the level of cognitive engagement evoked by the quality evaluation method did not take effect. Based on our protocol analyses, we argue that cognitive engagement appears to be an important factor that affects the quality of conceptual model evaluation work.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below:
http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol13/iss9/2/

PAPER TWO
Order Machine – The Ontology of Information Security By Jukka Vuorinen and Pekka Tetri

Abstract
Traditionally, information security has been approached in terms of how to achieve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. In this paper, we seek to ontologically examine information security by using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical concepts of machine, coupling, interruption, and territory. Through these concepts, we conceptualize information security as an order-seeking, connection-based, territorial security machine that attempts to subject and harness other actors – from technical devices and physical barriers to employees and various combinations of these actors – to carry out the security machine’s protective tasks. The goal of the security machine is to block or interrupt the chaotic forces of the outside and, thus, to maintain the fragile order of information. However, the process of interrupting the outside requires interruption of the inside as well: users and organizations are interrupted daily by the security machine and its practices. Yet this aspect of information security has remained largely unexamined. We argue that the question of what information security does to its subjects – what its effects are – in the protected system should be examined more thoroughly.


To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below:
http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol13/iss9/1/




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