Motivating open source software developers: influence of transformational and transactional leaderships
Open Source Software (OSS) is developed by geographically distributed unpaid programmers. The success of such a seemingly chaotic OSS project will largely depend on how the project leader organizes and motivates the developers to contribute. Grounded on leadership and motivation theories, we proposed and tested a research model that seeks to explain the behavioral effects of a leader on the developers' motivation to contribute. Survey data collected from 118 OSS developers on Sourceforge.net was used to test the research model. The results indicate that leaders' transformational leadership is positively related to developers' intrinsic motivation and leaders' active management by exception, a form of transactional leadership, is positively related to developers' extrinsic motivation.

title: A Human Capital Perspective of Organizational Intention to Adopt Open Source Software
abstract: This study adopts the human capital perspective as a theoretical lens to understand the factors that influence organizational intention to adopt open source software (OSS). We posit that availability of internal human capital and accessibility to external human capital significantly affect an organization’s intention to adopt OSS either directly or indirectly through switching cost. We analyze survey responses from 81 chief information officers or information systems managers and the results indicate that organizational availability of internal human capital has an indirect effect on an organization’s intention to adopt OSS through switching cost whereas accessibility to external human capital has a direct effect on an organization’s intention to adopt OSS. This study has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the unique approach from the human capital perspective adds to the extant literature on organizational adoption of innovation and calls for more attention to be directed at understanding the influence of human capital in an increasingly technologically complex environment. Practically, our findings suggest that potential OSS adopters and proponents should develop the human capital necessary for effective exploitation of OSS.

title: An Empirical Investigation of the Auction Buyer's Choice to Buy Out or Bid: Cry of Regret or Laugh of Satisfaction?
abstract: Online auction buyers often face the predicament of choosing between the buyout strategy and the bidding strategy to acquire an auctioned product. A buyer who chooses to buy out will obtain the item immediately at the posted price while the one who chooses to bid will have to monitor the bidding process in the hope of acquiring the product at a price lower than the posted one. Despite the wealth of auction literature, relatively few studies empirically assess the buyout option. This study seeks to bridge the gap by investigating how the buyout option (permanent or temporary) and price parameters (starting price and buyout price) affect the formation of two emotions, namely anticipated satisfaction of choice and anticipated regret of outcome, which in turn affect the buying strategy (i.e., buy out or bid). We employ laboratory experiments in our study and our results indicate two interesting findings. First, when the permanent buyout option is available, a buyer is more likely to exhibit loss aversion characteristics and prefer to adopt the buyout strategy. Second, when the temporary buyout option is present, the thought that one could avoid premature ending of auction by exercising the bidding option at the start decreases one’s preference for adopting the buyout strategy. Implications of these results for further research and practice are discussed.

title: Comparison-Shopping Websites: An Empirical Investigation on the Influence of Decision Aids and Information Load on Consumer Decision-Making Behavior
abstract: Rapid advances in Internet commerce technology have brought about the emergence of comparison-shopping Websites, which act as agents to consolidate vast amounts of product information. Researchers have traditionally focused on incorporating the latest database interrogation technology and investigating the economic implications of the existence of comparison-shopping Websites. Little attention has been paid to understanding whether the decision aids provided are capable of assisting a consumer in managing a large quantity of information or, more importantly, are compatible with the decision-making behavior of the consumer. This study surveys several successful comparison-shopping Websites, enumerates two comercially successful forms of decision aids (i.e., screening and sorting), and examines their effects on decision effectiveness under different information loads. Based on a 3×2×2 factorial controlled experiment, we had three major findings. First, more sophisticated screening aids that assist a consumer in filtering a large quantity of information do not necessarily improve decision effectiveness. Surprisingly, our results even suggest that in some circumstances the opposite could be true. Second, the results indicate that the effectiveness of decision aids, to a large extent, depends on the information load. Third, decision makers are adaptive. One may supplement the absence of more sophisticated screening aids with the sorting aid.

title: An Investigation of Online Group-Buying Institution and Buyer Behavior
abstract: This study draws on interdependency theory to propose and assess the effects of two artifacts - conditional purchase and information cue - on decisional choice in the online group-buying context. Our results suggest that buyers presented with conditional purchase options (i.e., of not honoring the purchase when the expected discount price is not met) are more willing to make a purchase choice (i.e., deviate from an inactive inertia). Counter-intuitively, provision of information cues (i.e., information about procurement actions of the other buyers) appears to induce inaction. However, when a choice has to be made between a riskier and a less risky choice, the presence of information cues leads to a higher propensity for the riskier choice. Implications for theory and practice are further discussed.

title: Forecasting and Analysis of Marketing Data Using Neural Networks
abstract: This study aims to incorporate Artificial Neural Networks into a Marketing Decision Support System (MDSS), specifically, by discovering important variables that influence sales performance of colour television (CTV) sets in the Singapore market using neural networks. Three kinds of variables, expert knowledge, marketing information and environmental data, are examined. The information about the effects of each of these variables has been studied and made available for decision making. However, their combined effect is unknown. This study attempts to explore the combined effect for the benefit of our collaborator, a multinational corporation (MNC) in the consumer electronics industry in Singapore. Putting these three variables together as input variables results in a neural network model. Neural network training is conducted using historical data on CTV sales in Singapore collected over the past one and a half years. Sensitivity analysis is then performed to reduce input variables of neural networks. This is done by analyzing the weights of the input node connections in the trained neural networks using two different methods. The weaker variables can be excluded, and this results in a simpler model. Further, an R-Square value of almost 1 is obtained through the inclusion of an Unknown variable when the network model consisting only of the most influential variables is trained and tested. Knowing the most influential variables, which in this case include Average Price, Screen Size, Stereo Systems, Flat-Square screen type and Seasonal Factors, marketing managers can improve sales performance by paying more attention to them.

title: Efficient edge detection using hierarchical structures
abstract: Edge detection can be enhanced by using hierarchical structures to improve both speed and quality of edge maps. Three new techniques are proposed to further improve on current techniques, working to produce edge maps more efficiently and improve the planning process in noisy maps. By putting the hierarchical planning at upper levels and any edge detection operation at the lowest level, much wasteful edge searching can be avoided.

title: A case study on using neural networks to perform technical forecasting of forex
abstract: This paper reports empirical evidence that a neural network model is applicable to the prediction of foreign exchange rates. Time series data and technical indicators, such as moving average, are fed to neural networks to capture the underlying ‘rulesa of the movement in currency exchange rates. The exchange rates between American Dollar and "ve other major currencies, Japanese Yen, Deutsch Mark, British Pound, Swiss Franc and Australian Dollar are forecast by the trained neural networks. The traditional rescaled range analysis is used to test the ‘e$ciencya of each market before using historical data to train the neural networks. The results presented here show that without the use of extensive market data or knowledge, useful prediction can be made and signi"cant paper pro"ts can be achieved for out-of-sample data with simple technical indicators. A further research on exchange rates between Swiss Franc and American Dollar is also conducted. However, the experiments show that with e$cient market it is not easy to make pro"ts using technical indicators or time series input neural networks. This article also discusses several issues on the frequency of sampling, choice of network architecture, forecasting periods, and measures for evaluating the model’s predictive power. After presenting the experimental results, a discussion on future research concludes the paper.

title: Chart Image Classification Using Multiple-Instance Learning
abstract: An important step in chart image understanding is to identify the type of the input image so that corresponding interpretation can be performed. In this paper, we model the chart image classification as a multiple-instance learning problem. A chart image is treated as a bag containing a set of instances that are graphical symbols. For both training and recognition, shape detection is performed and general shape descriptors are used to form feature vectors. For the training images, the correlation factor (CF) of each shape is calculated for each chart type. The learnt CFs are then used to estimate the type of a new input image. Comparing with traditional multiple-instance learning algorithms, we allow negative examples to be less restrictive and hence easier to provide. Using our method, both the type and the data components of the chart image can be obtained in one-pass. The experimental results show that our approach works reasonably well

title: Document image enhancement using directional wavelet
abstract: This paper proposes an algorithm to clean up a large collection of historical handwritten documents kept up in the National Archives of Singapore. Due to the seepage of ink over long period of storage, the front page of each document has been severely marred by the reverse side writing. Earlier attempts have been made to match both sides of the page to identify the offending strokes originating from the back so as to eliminate them with the aid of a wavelet transform. Perfect matching, however, is difficult due to document skews, differing resolutions, inadvertently missing out reverse side and warped pages during image capture. An approach is now proposed to do away with double side mapping by using a directional wavelet transform that is able to distinguish the foreground and reverse side strokes much better than the conventional wavelet transform. Experiments have shown that the method indeed enhances the readability of each document significantly over after the directional wavelet operation without the need for mapping with its reverse side.