Shailendra C. Jain Palvia

I was born when first digital computer ENIAC was being unveiled. Since then, we have moved through several ages of computer evolution: mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers (microcomputers), and Internet. Within the Internet age starting in late 1980s, there have been several stages of an unprecedented electronic evolution or revolution which can be labelled as e-mail, e-commerce, e-government, and now e-education. Back in 1998, I thought e-Commerce will never take off. Much to my surprise, not only did it take off, it has grown faster than traditional commerce. Most people are now skeptic about e-Education taking off. This preface article is an attempt to articulate what has happened and what lies ahead.

Corruption in varying degrees exists in almost all countries. But its alarmingly high levels and persistence in developing countries such as India is a cause for deep concern. Indeed, international agencies and governments are continually engaged in devising new strategies to check corruption. Although e-government has held much promise in this regard, its impact on developing country corruption presents a mixed picture. The paper connects to the relevant theories and posits a conceptual model of e-government impact on corruption. In addition, a few Indian case-studies are re-visited and their outcomes with regard to corruption are analyzed afresh in terms of the conceptual model. This paper should help e-government impact research to move forward from non-theory to theory driven.

(2010). Promises and Perils of Internet based Networking. Journal of Global Information Technology Management: Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 1-9.

Information systems (IS) offshoring has become a widespread practice and a strategic sourcing choice for many firms. While much has been written by researchers about the factors that lead to successful offshoring arrangements from the client's viewpoint, the vendor's perspective has been largely scarce. The vendor perspective is equally important as offshore IS vendors need to make important decisions in terms of delivering operational and strategic performance and aligning their resources and processes in order to meet or exceed targeted outcomes. In this article, we propose and test a three‐level capability–quality–performance (CQP) theoretical framework to understand vendor outcomes and their antecedents. The first level of the framework represents three vendor capabilities: relationship management, contract management, and information technology management. The second level has three mediating variables representing process quality: partnership, service, and deliverable quality. The third level has three dependent variables representing vendor outcomes: operational performance, strategic performance, and satisfaction. The model was tested with 188 vendor firms from India and China, the two most popular destinations for IS offshoring. Results support the CQP framework; vendor capabilities are significant predictors of intermediate quality measures, which in turn affect vendor outcomes. Implications of the study findings to both theory development and IS offshore vendor strategic decision making are discussed.

Ten years, one hundred and twenty months, three thousand six hundred and fifty two days later, it gives me a great pleasure to make a journey back into the memory lane and recount the excitement, challenges, and the leading edge innovations of running an enterprise called JITCA/JITCAR. I am sure several editors in chief, especially founding editors, will be able to relate to what I am going to enumerate rather fondly. This preface of the last issue under my editorship will be well served if current and future editors will relate to these experiences and learn from my experiences to make only new mistakes, if any.

(2005). Outsourcing Issues and Challenges Facing CEOs and CIOs. Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 1-6.