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E-commerce security measures: are they worth it?

A Rushinek, S Rushinek - Ubiquity, 2002 - portal.acm.org
... Case Study", Journal of Forensic Accounting, 2000, Vol. ... Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.
edu) research interests ... interested in the future of information technology. ...

E-Commerce Security Measures: Are They Worth It?
By Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

Cost benefits of the security and systems management of electronic publishing Internet Web server subscription services and e-commerce.

This study deals with a perceived cost benefit theory of the security and systems management of electronic publishing Internet Web servers and subscription services. Our focus includes security threats, vulnerabilities and proposed remedies.

Before the catastrophe of the World Trade Center twin Towers on 9/11/2001, Americans felt pretty secure in the US. All of that changed overnight; it took only one event to alter the perceived cost of insecurity in the United States. The security vulnerability facts of the US did not change as a result of the 9/11 event, but the perceptions changed dramatically. All of a sudden Americans felt very insecure, and felt the full cost of this insecurity in terms of loss of life, property, stock market values, loss of opportunities, economic decline, and constant fear of terror.

Our theory is that the same perception applies to computer security and e-commerce in particular. The perceived cost of security vulnerabilities dictates their perceived benefits, and therefore the spending on security measures and controls. It is similar to the theory of "What Makes Users Happy (Rushinek & Rushinek, 1986)," except that it is more about "what makes users unhappy." The main hypothesis, which we have tested numerous times, is that users will pay for whatever makes them happy. Likewise, they will pay to avoid what makes them unhappy. For a more detailed analysis, we will apply our theory to the security and systems management of automated electronic publishing Internet Web server and e-commerce.

Overview

An electronic publishing Internet Web server hosts an accounting spreadsheet Internet case study that provides students an opportunity to practice what they have learned and prepare for the final exam. During the semester, students download the case from an electronic publishing Internet site for a small fee (http://www.cybertext.com). Students subscribe to these services using a credit card and can use the services for the duration of the semester. The subscription allows the students to upload their work an unlimited number of times. The case assignment is graded each time the students upload their work to the server, keeping their latest score as the final score. This case is a take-home exam of sorts; students take it on their own time during the semester, and their last score contributes to 10 percent of their final grade in the class. Once we establish that the performance of the case assignment and the final exam in the course are statistically significant, we can use this correlation, or lack of it, as a red flag detector for the possibility of cheating. Such a detection system design is the focus of the current study.

Recent political and military events, coupled with the accelerating frequency of cyber attacks on network and Information Technology (IT) systems and technical revelations of management protocol insecurities, underscore the substantial risks associated with network, systems and applications management. In our case of the Security and Systems Management of an Electronic Publishing Internet Web Server, students and possibly even some faculty members may attack the network system or the Web server. This system involves an author who develops this case study and gets royalties from the revenues that the Web server collects from each student who subscribes to the services for the duration of the semester. Students may be motivated to crash the system so that the instructor will relieve them from the burden of doing the assignments. Likewise, professors that have to include student's performance in the final grade may also not be extremely motivated to administer this case, but this is another problem. The focus of this study is how to control the students and the insecurities that they may present themselves.

Through management systems, rogue students can perpetrate targeted as well as system-wide fraud, theft of services, and disruption of capabilities and management data. One activity that the students may be able to do, is continuously gang up on the Web server. They can upload excessive payloads on to the server continuously and relentlessly, crashing it multiple times. Then they can run back to the administration claiming the server is down and they should be relieved from the homework.

Worse yet, due to the extended, pervasive reach of management systems, such rogues can obtain the credit card numbers of other students and attempt to either use or sell them on the Internet. Likewise, such students may also try to cheat by not taking their own take-home case exam, and instead hiring other students to do the work for them. In return, these students will pay other students to do the work for them, and upload the work as if they have done it. Other rogue students and non-students may see this as an opportunity to make a little money and participate in this scheme. Likewise, students can try to upload huge video files, viruses embedded in the case-study files and put a stranglehold on the IT and networking resources of an enterprise, the university in this case, and/or the Web server, which is a third-party independent publishing company.

Consequently, interest in the security aspects of the Security and Systems Management of Electronic Publishing Internet Web Servers and Services has been on the increase. Security is now an essential feature, not an after-thought, of an information enterprise. The commercial sector is pursuing double-digit growth rates for IT and network security spending. Publishing companies are embracing e-business strategies that involve integration of systems and resources with business partners. The publishing professors and authors want assurances that their internal resources will not be compromised by vulnerable management systems, internal or external. Such companies and universities remain at risk for cyber attack on the integrity of their systems. This is making security R&D a high priority. International standardization activities are emerging to address security in managed networking domains for global communities.

Threats, Vulnerabilities and Requirements for Security Management and Management System Security

1. Web Server Side Threats, vulnerabilities and requirements for security management and management system security.

We can divide threats, vulnerabilities, and requirements for security management and management system security to two main categories, the Web server, and the Web client. We can further sub-divide the Web server category into its users. One type of user is the publisher, another type of user is the author or the software developer (which many times are the same person, but can be different people and many times different companies). The clients are students, who subscribe to the services for the duration of the semester and their respective instructor, who instructs them and grades their performances. Each category and sub-category has its own unique threats, vulnerabilities, and requirements for security management and management system security. In contrast, all users have also some common threats, vulnerabilities and requirements for security management and management system security.

One common Web server side type of vulnerability is the stability, scalability and availability of the server. All the users need to access the server, and some even have an interest in bringing it down. For example, if the students can bring the server down at the last week of the semester, the due date, they may relieve themselves of the extra work. Such threats, vulnerabilities, and requirements for security management and management system security may include but are not limited to virus attacks, overloading the storage, and bandwidth with huge irrelevant files, such a DVD files, etc.

Server Back Up & Recovery Procedures

What can the publisher and administrator of the server do to back up the server and recover (Rushinek & Rushinek, 1985) from a server crash, in which all the work of all the students for the entire semester may be lost? Does the publisher have server back up and recovery procedures and are they effective?

What about the loss of the credit card numbers that were collected yet not charged? Is there anyway to recover them and proceed with charging them and collecting the revenue due to the author/developer?

Web Server Side and Author/Developer Category Insecurity Concerns

Other vulnerabilities and requirements for security management and management system security are unique to the author and software developers. Their concern may be as to how easy is it for the publisher or another author/developer team to reverse engineer their creation, duplicate it, and compete with them. Specifically, they may be concerned about the publisher. How easy will it be for the publisher to reverse engineer popular subscription-based case studies, recreate them, and cut the original author/developer team out of business?

Web Server Side and Publisher Category Insecurity Concerns

On the other hand, the publisher may have the opposite concern. Once the author/developer team figures out how profitable it is to run this subscription service, what will prevent them from duplicating the server on their own and cut out the publisher, by placing their own server on the World Wide Web? This way, instead of making only a commission of 10 percent from the sale, the author/developer team is in for the entire 100 percent of the profit. The authors do not even need to set up their own server; they can simply rent these services from any Internet service provider for a flat fee of $20 a month and $60 for a semester, keeping the profit for themselves. If only 300 students subscribe at $20 a pop, the author will earn $540 for one course. Scale it to a large state school, like the University of Texas at Austin, and you get 10 times as much for one course, about $5000, and for two courses $10,000. One can scale it further to several dozen large schools to get approximately $10,000 per school and $100,000 per semester. This can be more than the average professor earns for an entire academic year.

2. Client Side Threats, vulnerabilities and requirements for security management and management system security.

Theft of Client Credit Cards

One client-type vulnerability is the stealing and selling of students' credit card numbers. As of now, the students enter their credit card numbers into a regular field, where it is visible to any other student, who may be watching over their shoulders. A remedy for this problem would be to mask the credit card field with dark dots so that it is not visible to the eyes of a bystander. Is it cost effective? Is it necessary? How many students are likely to steal, conceal and sell other students credit numbers? These are empirical questions. So far we have not documented even one such case. Is it impossible? No. It is very easy to do. However, what are the chances of this to occur? Do we want to wait until it happens? The answer may depend on the development cost versus the potential risk of loss and damages.

If the loss of revenues and profits are enormous, yet the development cost is insignificant, we will do it soon. On the other hand, if the margins are such that we barely break even, we are not going to sink a lot more cash and resources into the security of the system.

Let us say that we have further developed the security and the system masks the first two digits of the credit card any time a student enters a credit card. A bystander would no longer be able to simply copy the credit card number and expiration date from the screen. Is this security method foolproof? The answer is no! A sophisticated student can run a keyboard entry trapping (trapper) routine on all the computers in the lab prior to the arrival of the class. Such a trapper routing will trap the entries directly from the keyboard interrupt ignoring the video display and storing the entries on a file, to be used later. Should the developer go to the next step to detect and or prevent such trapper routines? We do not think that it will be cost effective in this case, but it may be in other cases.

Hiring a Proxy to Perform the Work for Which Students Claim Credit

How about cheating? Can we verify that a student does not hire another student to upload the take-home case-study exam with certainty? No, not if we let them do the work anywhere any time they want. Do we want to force the students to do the work in the university lab under the supervision of a proctor and view of the security cameras? This may not be feasible because the labs are not large enough to accommodate so many students for so many hours. The whole point of this method of teaching is the flexibility to do it anywhere, at anytime, as many times as the student wants. So what can we do to discourage cheating?

This is the focus of our current study: A system that discourages cheaters by automating the detection of red flags, and allows one to review the flags for further investigation. This threat alone may be sufficient to deter students from cheating, and yet is extremely inexpensive.

The Security and Systems Management of an Electronic Publishing Internet Web Server

How does the security and systems management of an electronic publishing Internet Web server system work? Simply, it tracks the students at the extremes of the performance distribution. It finds the students with the highest case study grades and the lowest in-class test grades, and flags them. Such students will be invited to speak to the instructor to explain the wide grade discrepancy between their take-home case study and their in-class exams that cover the same material. The instructors may well accept their explanations. The instructors may choose to re-administer the case study under supervision. If they ace it again or come close to it, it's ok; but if they fail it miserably, then may be they have cheated the first time when they aced it, and got 100 percent in one upload. In this case, investigations may be warranted and further security measures need to be implemented in the future.

Another initial security threat to this system was that the correct solutions were included in a hidden Excel spreadsheet. The security weakness was such that some students figured out how to get into the hidden sheets. Instead of solving the problems by themselves, they copied the correct solution from the hidden sheet, and submitted it as if they have solved the problem. The current security system has controlled for such vulnerabilities.

Client Back Up & Recovery Procedures

The instructor teaches the students to work on the hard drive since it is faster and more secure, and then upload their work to a "digital drop box," which is an education Web server that stores their work. This digital drop box stores the student's work to two different directories. One is the student's private directory and the other is the instructor's directory. This way the student has four different concurrent copies of their work. Furthermore, the instructor requires students to maintain three generations of floppy copies, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, alternating their use every day. This way when the Friday floppy is wiped out, the student client can recover from the Wednesday floppy losing only one day of work, assuming their work is no longer on the hard drive and the "digital drop boxes.

Testing and Evaluating Security Management and Management System Security Solutions

For those students that the system generated "red flags", re-testing will be done. The continuous re-testing of some students constitutes part of a testing & evaluating security management system for these e-business systems. As long as it appears to be working, we will avoid any drastic changes. In contrast, if we discover a large number of problems, we will add additional security measures.

One of the security solutions that we used to ensure that the system would not crash during normal overload was to invite an entire class of students to the PC Lab at the beginning of the semester. We had the students upload files to the server simultaneously. After the Web server passed several of these tests, we authorized the use of this system on our classes. We do this load testing at the beginning of each semester, to ensure that the Web server is stable enough and that it can handle normal overload.

Integration of Security and Management with Business Goals and Strategies

We integrated the security and management of this system with its business goals and strategies of a take-home exam and a case study system. We want to avoid overloading the instructor with excessive grading duties by automatically grading the students every time they upload their answers to the server. This makes it possible for students to cheat every time they upload their work. We could limit the number of uploads, but this will deprive diligent students from learning from their mistakes during successive uploads.

This case study so far has been an experience of secure management and security management systems that is sufficient and cost effective. Some weaknesses still remain but it is not clear that securing these weaknesses any further will be cost effective. In other words, if we implement additional security measures their costs may exceed their benefits. For this reason, we want to investigate the red flags to decide whether these issues need additional security controls. For example, if we find that some students ace the take-home exam and fail the final, but there is no evidence that they have cheated, then there would be no reason to add more costly controls.

Capturing Sudents' User Names, Passwords, Credit Card Numbers, & Expiration Dates

There are several internal and external hardware and software keystroke loggers, recorders and trappers. These products can compile a record of what a user types and then make it available over email, Web site or recorded on a hardware device. Prices range from $100 to $500 for hardware-based keystroke loggers and can capture millions of keystrokes and support several foreign languages. Some of these devices are wireless and can communicate in real time. Logging software programs are available for less than $99 and record keystrokes and screen images (Coursey, 2002).

Due to the fact that many university labs set their computers to prohibit users from installing or downloading software, many of the keystroke logger software packages may not work. However, that still does not prevent the hardware logger from working. Thus a person, who knows when a class is coming to the lab, can install a few of these external hardware loggers prior to the arrival of the class, capture the data entries, and then after the departure of the class harvest the confidential information.

Is this possible? Yes. Is it simple? Yes. Could we prevent it? Yes, by simply enclosing the PC in a sealed cabinet while exposing only the part of the keyboard, video, and disk drive that users need to access. However, this is too costly for most education organizations and therefore, most of them remain vulnerable.

Laws and Policies on Management Systems, Operations, Administration and Maintenance

Laws and policies on management systems, operations, administration, and maintenance can be used to promote certain security issues. For example, one such issue is the prevention of cheating during a take-home case-study test. One of the policies on management systems, operations, administration and maintenance of this system is the implementation of a static random number generator for problems and solutions. This differs from a dynamic random number generator. Since the student does not need to finish the case in one sitting, the system generates a set of numbers for the case study and these numbers remain static for the student for each upload. However, to prevent cheating, each student is assigned a different random number generated set. Another policy enforced is a six-digit (to the right side of the decimal point) precision requirement for the solutions to the answers.

The static random number generated problems and solutions ensure that each student gets a unique set of numbers in the problem and its solution. This makes it more difficult for a student to copy and paste the answers of another student, and claim credit for another student's work. However, the system is still vulnerable to copying and pasting of the formulas, which will ensure that no matter what the numbers are, as long as the formula is correct the students will be able to get away with cheating.

What can we do to further reduce the probability of cheating? We could implement a random number generation of the formulas, making it very difficult and time-consuming to copy and paste formulas from one student to the other. However, this will not be cost effective for now, because the return on investment (ROI) does not justify additional investments on the current return.

The six-digit (to the right side of the decimal point) precision requirement for the solutions to the answers makes it more difficult for students to simply copy manually the answers from another source, such as a calculator or another student. The idea is to motivate the student to use a spreadsheet to calculate the results, rather than a traditional calculator. Again, this is not perfectly effective; some students have such bias against using a spreadsheet that they get a calculator with high precision and type in the answers manually. So, should we raise the precision? We do not think so, due to the diminishing cost benefit relationships.

In summary, we have reviewed the security and systems management of electronic publishing Internet Web servers, highlighting some of the red flag security threats and applying a cost benefit approach. We have listed numerous issues and advanced the theory that it may all be a function of a cost benefit analysis. More specifically, it is a matter of the perceived cost of insecurity. Based on the perceived cost of insecurity, we estimate the value of the benefits of eliminating that cost and finally arriving at the value of the solutions.


Conclusions

We conclude that typically our experience and not objective facts determine the perceived cost of insecurity. Therefore, only catastrophic experiences of the kind that we have described will lead to a sufficiently high value of the perceived cost of insecurity. For example, if 4,000 credit card numbers were to be stolen from student labs at a large university, leading to an average of $1,000 of unauthorized Internet purchases, and total of a total of $4 million of losses and damages; this may be sufficient to draw the attention of the relevant authorities, raising the perceived cost of insecurity. That rise in the perceived cost of insecurity will lead to a different cost benefit analysis and the tightening of some of the security holes that we have listed.

Without a significant rise in the perceived cost of insecurity, the cost of security measures is obvious. It is clear every time we have to remember which user name and password applies to which system. Every time we misspell our user name or password, and every time we have to re-enter them, is another experience of burden and the cost of security systems. Every time we use a user name like "username" and a password like "password," we remember the burden of security. So, we will continue to be very cautious before we will implement more security measures.

The implication of this study is that more resources should be devoted to evaluating the effect of such a training method in order to further improve its academic effectiveness as well as the cost effectiveness. As software becomes more Internet-compliant, such applications will be much more robust and much easier to develop and use. Therefore, we expect them to grow exponentially with the growth of the Internet.


References

Coursey, D. "Keystroke Loggers" http://www.zdnet.com, January 4, 2002.

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Accounting Information System Development in EDP Auditing," The Management Accountant, March 1983, 96-100.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Security: Vital Controls in an Accounting Information System," Accountancy, March 1983, Vol. 94, No. 1075, 65-68.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Performance Monitoring Tools for Computer Systems: Hardware, Software, Firmware and Hybrid Controls," Computers & Industrial Engineering, 1984, Vol. 9, No. 4, 419-524.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Auditing Accounting Information Systems Around, Through and With the Computer," The Ohio CPA Journal, 1984, Vol. 43, No. 2, 73-78.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Data Capture, Preparation and Entry Controls in an Accounting Information System," Data Management, July 1984.

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Threats to Computer Security," Business, October 1984, Vol. 34, No. 4, 45-48.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Auditing the Computerized Accounting Information System: Conceptual Foundation, Structure and Development," Modelling Simulation and Control, 1985, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1-19.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Generalized Audit Software: It's Usage in Accounting Information Systems," Cybernetica: International Association for Cybernetics, 1985, Vol. 28, No. 3, 247-258.

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Backup and Recovery in Accounting Information Systems," Data Processing, April 1985, Vol. 27, No. 3, 42-46.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy," Communications of the ACM, July 1986, Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Physical Locking/Antitheft Devices (LD) Case Study: A Product Evaluation and Selection System," Cybernetics, 1988, Vol.31, No.4.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Evaluating Asset Safeguarding and Data Integrity in the EDP Audit", Managerial Auditing Journal, 1989, Vol. 4, No. 2, 3-6.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Data Encryption Features for Computer Hardware and Software Profitability: I/O ports, Expansion Slots, Algorithms, Cyphers and Security", Computers & Security, 1991, No. 10, 345-357.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Selecting Password/File Access Software", Corporate Controller, 1992, Vol. 4, No. 6, 33-38.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Data Encryption (DE) Case Study: Feature Selection System (FSS) for Microcomputer Users and Manufacturers", Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies and Research, 1993, Vol. 26, No. 1, 93-115.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Accounting Software Evaluation: Hardware, Audit Trails, Backup, Error Recovery and Security", Managerial Auditing Journal, 1995, Vol. 10, No. 9, 29-37.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Internet Fraud Auditing: A Simulated Health Care Industry Case Study", Journal of Forensic Accounting, 2000, Vol. 1, No. 1, 125-234.


Forum

The authors are professors at the University of Miami. They will provide additional appendices, tables, charts and program code listings upon written request. Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e-commerce security and controls, Web marketing ROI, e-learning, and Internet domain copyright, trademarks and patents ROI. Sara Rushinek's research interests include computer applications for decision-making, electronic stock trading; and Internet and e-commerce security of enterprise resource management.

Cited by 2 - Related articles

What makes users unhappy: share-point team services web server security

- ►psu.edu [PDF] 
A Rushinek, S Rushinek - Ubiquity, 2005 - portal.acm.org
... Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e ... & Basel II Compliance
Forensic Accounting, Web ... interested in the future of information technology. ...

What Makes Users Unhappy:
Share-Point Team Services Web Server Security

By Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

Computer & Internet Security is very important but sometimes it is so confusing and frustrating that it makes users very unhappy— to a point where the system is so secure that it cannot be used by its most legitimate users, like system administrators

For more than 20 years we have written about user satisfaction, and it seems as if even with all the changes during this time, some things remain the same (See reference list). For example, our article about "What Makes Users Happy" (COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY, Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986) shows that system response time is the single most important factor. But it seems that sometimes the design of software slows down the system response time to a level that can make users very unhappy. Such a case in point is the Microsoft IIS & SPTS — Internet Information Server and Share Point Team Services.

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT

I have installed Microsoft SharePoint on one of the Web servers that I administer. Even though I have done it at least 30 times before, I still have problems with it. Microsoft SharePoint Team Services is a Web application that Microsoft bundled with Microsoft Office 2000/2002, which enables users to collaborate and share information on a Web server.

As the administrator of several Microsoft Web servers, I recently installed yet another Web server. But, after trying to upload a document to that Web server I received the following error message: "You are not authorized to view this page."

I conducted a Google search to find out solutions for this problem. Specifically, I entered the following search into the Google search engine:

"Microsoft SharePoint You are not authorized to view this page."

I found that Google listed 1-10 of about 4,010 articles revolving around the exact same issue. At this point I broke down and decided to resolve this problem and write this article.

I read the first few articles and followed their instructions. However, even though they all appeared quite logical, none of them solved my problem. I found that not one of them provided a correct solution to the problem that worked in my case. I gave up and proceeded to solve it by myself.

Following is the error message that Microsoft Web Server displayed it on the screen of the local host, the Web server machine:

"You do not have permission to view this page using your current user account."

Please try the following:

"If you have another user account with a higher level of permission, click your browser's Back button to try again using that account.

"If you believe you should be able to view this page, contact the Web site administrator.

http://localhost/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109

Error Cannot complete this action.

Please try again.

If this problem persists, please contact your administrator.

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint. (See Appendix A for actual output in HTML)

ANONYMOUS ACCESS

Anonymous access was checked marked. The following explanation appears at the dialogue box saying "No user name/password required to access this resource." But, this is not true! As the Administrator continues to read the dialog box, just in the next section, the following contradictory statement appears

"Authenticated access for the following authentication methods, user name and password are required when -anonymous access is disabled, or -access is restricted using NTFS access control list" (See Appendix 1: 1DefaultWebSitePropertiesDirectorySecurityAuthenticationMethos)

ANONYMOUS ACCESS IS DISABLED

Anonymous access has not been disabled, by me the administrator, nor has it been disabled by default. But due to this statement, one may be misled to go on a wild goose chase trying to figure out how else to enable the already-enabled Anonymous access (by checking the box in the Authentication Method dialogue box).

ACCESS IS RESTRICTED USING NTFS ACCESS CONTROL LIST

Access is not restricted using NTFS access control list. As the administrator, I went into the directory of the root of the Web server "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot." This misleads the administrator to think that enabling the permissions on the directory may allow access to the Web server, as I have done, to no avail

As we can see the Sharing Tab of the Workout Properties Check marks "Share This Folder On The Network And Allow Network Users To Change MyFiles." Yet the server still issues the infamous message as follows "You are not authorized to view this page"

SharingTabOfTheWWWRootPropertiesCheckMarks
ShareThisFolderOnTheNetworkAndAllowNetworkUsersTo
ChangeMyFiles).

I then thought that it may have to do with the "NTFS access control list," as opposed to "FAT32." (NTFS refers to New Technology File System versus its older counter part file structure, FAT32-File Allocation 32 bit, which is Microsoft's terminology for Hard Disk Drive file structures).

By this time, I had given up struggling to figure out what to do — I surfed the Internet a bit and decided to check with an older FAT32 server, in which I had already encountered and solved the same problem several years ago. In the meantime, I forgot how I resolved it before, and furthermore I thought that due to the more recent NTFS the old tricks of FAT32 may no longer apply. That was wrong! I went back to the old Web server machine, checking the properties of the same tab, finding some differences. The differences included the following additional 2 check marks that I noticed right away:

-Allow IIS to control password, and
-Integrated Windows authentication.

ALLOW IIS TO CONTROL PASSWORD

I had followed the practice of the running old FAT32 Windows XP Web server, and check marked the "[x] Allow IIS to control password." I thought that this would allow IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server Version 5 bundled with Windows XP Professional Operating System, bundled with the PC Hardware).

INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION

Much like the previous check mark, I followed the same procedure for the following option of "Integrated Windows authentication." I have also check-marked this option for the NTFS Web server. I hope that this will emulate the working FAT32 Web server, enabling me, the administrator, to avoid the annoying "You are not authorized to view this page" message. I was right, but then I remembered that I had done it already several times before, each time forgetting how I solved the problem the previous time.

SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

In summary, we have demonstrated how confusing security procedures can make users very unhappy. We also demonstrated how to solve the problem of dealing with some of the Microsoft issues regarding "INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION," "ALLOW IIS TO CONTROL PASSWORD," and "ANONYMOUS ACCESS." The implications are that some things do not change: Users still want a responsive system, and when problems occur, a responsive company corrects the problems, or at least explains how to correct the problems.

[NOTE: FOR THE APPENDICES OR FOR OTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHORS AT ARUSHINE@aol.com.]

References

1     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Distribution Processing: Implications and Applications for Business," JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, Vol. 35, No. 7, 21-27, July 1984.

2     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Word Processing Software on User Satisfaction: An Empirical Study of Micro, Mini and Mainframe Computers," OFFICE SYSTEMS RESEARCH JOURNAL, Vol. 3, No. 1, lead article 1-16, Fall 1984.

3     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Mini/Micro Computer Evaluation of System Features: An Empirical Discriminant Model of Software and Hardware Expandability, Compatibility, Cost/Efficiency, Installation and Delivery," MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Vol. 5, No. 3, 150-159, September 1984.

4     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Computer Assisted Manufacturing Software Related to User Satisfaction: An Interactive Knowledge Based System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails for Planning and Control," JOURNAL OF INFORMATION AND OPTIMIZATION SCIENCES, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1985.

5     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Health and Medical Software Related to Computer User Satisfaction: An Interactive Online Expert System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails Through Telecommunication Networks," HEALTH POLICY, Vol. 4, 199-219, 1985.

6     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Preliminary Studies On the Development of a Decision Support System for Evaluating Engineering and Scientific Software," ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING SOFTWARE, Vol. 7, No. 4, 173-178, 1985.

7     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "User Involvement in the Development and Use of Computer Based Systems for the Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Reducing Protocol Errors," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REHABILITATION RESEARCH, Vol. 8, No. 4, 443-454, 1985.

8     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Effect of System Ratings on User Satisfaction," INFORMATION AGE, Vol. 7, No. 2, 98-106, April 1985.

9     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Operating Systems, Compilers, Assemblers and Application Programs: Audit Trails of User Satisfaction," MICROPROCESSORS AND MICROSYSTEMS, Vol. 9, No. 5, 241-249, June 1985.

10     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Health Marketing and Sales Distribution Software Related to Computer User Satisfaction," HEALTH MARKETING QUARTERLY, Vol. 3, No. 1, 79-101, Fall 1985.

11     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Production and Inventory Management Software Packages Related to User Reactions," PRODUCTION AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT, Vol. 27, No. 1, 75-84, 1986.

12     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Communication Monitors on User Satisfaction," INFORMATION PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT, Vol. 22, No. 4, 345-351, January 1986.

13     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Influence of Trouble-Shooting, Education and Documentation on Computer User Satisfaction," IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN AND CYBERNETICS, Vol. SMC-16, No. 1, 165-167, January/February 1986.

14     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy," COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY (ACM), Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986.

15     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Computer Location on End-user Satisfaction," INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT AND DATA SYSTEMS, 3-7, November-December 1986.

16     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "An Application Model for Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing Using a Product Evaluation and Selection System," COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, Vol.12, No. 3, 173-180, 1987.

17     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "CAD-CAM (Computer Assisted Design- Computer Assisted Manufacturing) Electronic Design Case Study: A Needs Assessment for Microcomputer Users, Vendors and Consultants," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vol. 3, No. 3, 299-306, 1987.

18     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Education, Scheduling and Administration Related to Computer User Satisfaction: An Interactive On-line Expert System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails Through Telecommunication Networks," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vol. 3, No. 4, 399-412, 1987.

19     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Business Graphic Packages," JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, Volume 39, No. 3, 12-21, March 1988.

20     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Graphics Board (GB) Case Study: Feature Selection System for Microcomputer users and Manufacturers" INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MICROGRAPHICS & VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, 1988.

21     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "A Feature Selection System for Multiuser Databases," OMEGA: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, Volume 17, No. 1, January 1989.

22     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Accelerator Boards, Memory, Power, Coprocessor, and Price in an Automated and Networked Matching Algorithm of Users' Needs", COMPUTERS & ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, Vol. 15, No.3/4, 131-142, 1989.

23     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Training Software Case Study: A Product Evaluation and Selection System", JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 1989.

24     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Matching Program Code Generators to Software Developers' Needs", OMEGA: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1990.

25     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Terminal Emulation Controllers, Duplex, Communication Protocols, Multisession Networks, Copy Protection, Baud-Rate, and Windows Compatibility: Profit Measures and Product Features", TELEMATICS AND INFORMATICS, Pergammon Press, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1993, 59-73.

26     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Project Management Software Feature Profitability: Windows, Networks, Mainframes, Filtered Task Diagrams, Schedules, and Calendars, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS (JCIS), Vol. 37, No. 4, Summer 1997, 48-55.

The authors are professors at the University of Miami and board members of The Institute of Internal Auditors. They will provide additional information on this topic upon written request. Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e-commerce security and controls; HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability), Sarbanes-Oxley & Basel II Compliance Forensic Accounting, Web marketing ROI, e-learning, and Internet domain copyright, trademarks and patents ROI. Sara Rushinek's research interests include business intelligence and data mining for decision-making, electronic stock trading; and e-commerce security of enterprise resource management.



Source: Ubiquity Volume 6, Issue 2 (January 25 - February 1, 2005)

Cited by 1 - Related articles - All 3 versions

[DOC] ►… Prevention Controls of AIS Faculty Promotion-A Forensic Audit, Expert Witness Testimony …

A Rushinek, S Rushinek - s124243025.onlinehome.us
Avi Rushinek, Sara Rushinek. ... are looking at it more from the forensic audit, expert ...
an administrator that is not an IT (Information Technology) professional to ...

Class Action Sex Discrimination Prevention Controls of AIS Faculty Promotion- A Forensic Audit, Expert Witness Testimony & Computer Litigation Support Case

Avi Rushinek, Sara Rushinek

University of Miami

Correspond with Sara Rushinek, arush@miami.edu

***

***  Some of the tables have been omitted due to space constraints. Please contact the authors in writing for more information.
Class Action Sex Discrimination Prevention Controls of AIS Faculty Promotion- A Forensic Audit, Expert Witness Testimony & Computer Litigation Support Case

 I             Abstract

The authors develop a methodology to control for “Class Action Sex Discrimination” law suits using  Accounting Information System (AIS) faculty promotion as a case in point.  This is a forensic audit, expert witness testimony & computer litigation support case study approach to minimize the monetary damage, flag emerging cases and providing quick settlement of a class that is pending.  Such systems can be used by accreditation organizations such as the AACSB, who accredits accounting programs and examined how their publication rate.  Academic organizations such as the American Accounting Association (AAA) can use it to promote equal opportunities and compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  The EEOC can use it, to enforce compliance, and it can be used by universities and law firms as well..

Using standard statistical methods, the authors found that universities promote AIS faculty primarily on the basis of publications as they were statistically significant.  In contrast, the “gender” or sex was statistically insignificant, but indicate a bias in favor of female faculty members in the sample.  This means that there is no evidence of sex discrimination in the population, but the sample suggests that universities may be biased against males and in favor of female faculty members in promotion decisions.  The methodology can be used as red flags to investigate possible inequities in promotion decisions.

II             Introduction

The proliferation of “Class Action Sex Discrimination” cases reported by the press raises the issue of   preventitive controls.  This study looks at the case of AIS faculty promotion from a forensic audit, expert witness testimony and computer litigation support point of view. 

Class action sex discrimination suits  have been discussed recently in the press.  For instance Anthony Sebok (2004) reported that the class action sex discrimination suit against Wal-Mart was cetified a sex discrimination class action suit.  When a court "certifies" a class action, it allows the case to proceed with a class of plaintiffs, according to class action rules - as opposed to with a number of individual plaintiffs.) The class is claiming that Wal-Mart discriminated against women in the way it recruited and promoted managers. 

A nationwide employment discrimination class action lawsuit has been filed against Costco Wholesale Corporation (Patel, 2007).. The suit charges that Costco operates a "glass ceiling" at the store-management level which precludes women from obtaining promotion to assistant manager and general manager positions.

Wong (2008) reports about another similar case of gender discrimination lawsuit against Smith Barney.  The plaintiffs alleged that Smith Barney discriminated against female Financial Advisors in compensation and business opportunities. The parties entered into a four-year settlement agreement that is subject to Court approval.

Universities may also be at risk for possible class action suits.  Instead of instititions being in a reactive posture they may want to institute more preventive measures and continuously evaluate how well they abide by these measures. 

This study uses the number of refereed publications as a measure of  research productivity.   The authors develop a model to forecast the faculty rank (1 assistant, 2 associate and 3 full professor ) as a function of the number of publications and the faculty gender (Sex=1 for males, and 0 for females).  Likewise, this model offers a methodology of testing for Sex discrimination by the significance of the Sex variable on rank promotion decisions.  If the Sex is statistically significant, then discrimination may exist in the population.  In contrast, if Sex is statistically insignificant, then discrimination is less likely in the population.  If it appears like discrimination exists, then the plaintiff may need to set up a class-action server and let people join the class.  We are developing such a server with a survey to support such class-action lawsuits based on earlier work (Rushinek, 1990, 1997, 2005).

The purpose of this study is to develop a regression analysis connected to a continuous online survey that will raise red flags for the existence of sex discrimination.  This is a tool for compliance forensic audit with regulations of government agencies, such as the EEOC in the United States..  The regression helps determine whether sex is a significant factor in promotion decisions.  If it is significant, then it may indicate that a class action may form at a future time, and enable the parties to reduce its likelihood of occurrence (Rushinek, 1993, 2000).

We are using data collected by Simkin (2007) but applying it in a different way, and suggesting another data collection methodology for the future.  Unlike Simkin et. al who focus on the “profile of the publication rates of accounting faculty, and gender” for academic purposes, we are looking at it more from the forensic audit, expert witness testimony, and litigation support point of view.

Thus, our goal is to create benchmarks that might be useful to decide whether gender or sex discrimination exists on a continuous basis in an automated cost effective method of an internet WWW server online survey methodology.  For this purpose we recommend using  Microsoft SharePoint software that lets a lay person such as an administrator that is not an IT (Information Technology) professional to design and implement online interactive continuous survey, quickly and effectively (Rushinek and Rushinek, 1987, 1989, 2005).

III            Review Of The Literature Of Research Productivity

We have reviewed numerous applications and selected the best for evaluation of regulatory compliance such as the compliance with the US EEOC. What we are using here is a discriminant model, a model that discriminates between significant and insignificant sex discrimination. This is based on earlier studies by Rushinek and Rushinek (1985, 2000) that purports that the forensic auditor can provide effective expert witness testimony and computer litigation support regard“ AIS Sex discrimination class action law suits. 

  Quick system response time is the main determinator of overall user satisfaction. (Rushinek, 1987, 1989).  If filling out the survey takes too much time, users will fail to fill it and the data will not be accurate.  This study deals with anti-discrimination compliance software,  it is an interactive online expert system using diagnostic audit trails through telecommunication networks.  The audit trail is an important facet of the current study, due to the fact that we may need it to support the litigation.

                We focus on providing expert witness testimony and computer litigation support for employment and labor law discrimination cases, in general and class actions in particular.  There are many other reasons why measures of research productivity are important to accounting faculty.  As Simkin et. al. (2007). suggest that it is important “in creating benchmarks for the quantity and quality of publications needed to obtain tenure, be promoted, or receive annual merit awards (Hasselback, et. al, 2000; Hult, et. al., 1997, Pierce and Garner, 1995; Hagerman and Hagerman, 1989) Then too, administrators have a similar interest in these norms (Maranto and Streuly, 1994; Campbell, et. al., 1983; Schultz, et. al., 1989).

                Faculty research productivity is also important to those universities and colleges seeking accreditation (Bublitz and Kie, 1984; Hasselback, 2000).  One application in the accounting area is for comparisons among similar institutions (Lucertini, 1995; Posy and Parker, 1989; Jacobs, et. al., 1986), comparisons between Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. granting institutions (Schultz, et. al, 1989), or studies seeking to identify the accounting profession’s most prolific researchers (Hech and Bremsyn, 1986; Hech, et. al, 1991; Gopolakrishan and Chandy, 1991).”  Some research correlates publications to the area of specialization. (Campbell and Morgan ,1987; Englebrecht, et. al.,1994). 

Gender studies of research productivity have been common,  but none of them focus on sex discrimination and compliance testing.  As Simkin et. al. suggest  “Cole and Zuckerman (1984) note, for example, that over 50 such studies of academics outside the accounting discipline have found that female faculty members publish significantly fewer articles than their male counterparts. In a later study, Zuckerman (1987) found that women publish between 50 and 60 percent as many papers of what men publish.”  However, for the purpose of class action employment litigation is it significant? 

                Gender differences apply to the accounting areas as  Streuly and Maranto [1994] found that men published slightly more articles, but that these differences were not statistically significant.  Dwyer [1994] confirmed the finding academics (per Hasselback’s Accounting Faculty Directory) that women had published fewer times in academic journals, but is it statistically significant and up-to-date.

As schools increase the publications requirement for promotion (Read, Rama, and Raghunandan, 1998; Zivney, 1995; Milne and Vent, 1987, Englebrecht, et. al, 1994), testing for sex discrimination may be more important. This study focuses on “premier” journals articles (Van Fleet, et. al., 2000, Hasselback, et. al., 2000).  However, it is possible that the other “non premier” journals may exhibit similar patterns of less publications for females. (Hasselback, et. al., 2000; Heck, et. al, 1990 and 1991).

The quality of a journal is a subjective matter and varies among researchers (see, for example, Zivney, et. al., 1995).  AIS faculty member often publish in computer publications, which may not be considered as Accounting Journals.  As Daigle and Arnold (2000) found that the “top 25 AIS researchers” listed non-accounting publication outlets as the top journals.  Likewise, Christiansen, et. al., (2002) suggests that the tendency applies to accounting Ph.D.’s in that study’s researcher cohort.

Adjusting for co-authors (Hasselback, et. al., 2000) or accounting specialty (Campbell and Morgan, 1987), may further confound the results (Alexander and Mabry, 1994; Brown and Gardner, 1985). “Leveling the playing field” among the research facilities of organizations may further confound the finding (Englebrecht, et. al, 2000, Read, et. al., 1998, Dwyer, 1994, Schultz, et. al., 1989

IV     Microsoft Sharepoint Online Survey - Advantages Of An Online Compared To A Traditional Survey 

                As Simkin et. al. (2007) note “many of the studies cited above are now at least ten years old or used statistical methods that some scholars suggest hide more than they show.”  The trouble with paper surveys is that they are so expensive, and time consuming.  Traditional survey also involves many un-needed intermediaries that slow down the process.  Such intermediaries  as chairperson of the accounting department at each school are “requesting that this individual in turn distribute them to the faculty members in their departments,” which is yet another intermediary in the process of data collection.  Furthermore, such surveys are typically based on printed directories, such as “faculty and school listings in Prentice Hall’s Accounting Faculty Directory 2001-2002 (Hasselback’s).,” which may be outdated as soon as they are published.  In contrast, schools update their web sites much more frequently than any printed publication.  Therefore, using an online survey that picks the information from the internet WWW can be more up-to-date than a printed directory (Rushinek 2005, 1997).

We have used the data that Simkin et. al. (2007) collected as follows: “The areas of research specialization were (1) accounting information systems (AIS), (2) auditing, (Audit), (3) financial accounting (Financial), (4) managerial accounting (Management), (5) tax accounting (Tax), and (6) other (Other). The Other category captured all responses that did not list the first five areas above, and included governmental and not-for-profit accounting, international accounting, accounting education, and ethics. Our academic rank categories were (1) Adjunct Professor, (2) Assistant Professor, (3) Associate Professor, (4) Full Professor, and (5) Other.”

We have focused on AIS (Accounting Information Systems) faculty member’s ranks, Assistant, Associate, and Full professors, their number of publications, and whether they were males (1) or females (0).  This way we had a much more homogeneous data, which would result in a higher R-Square in a multivariate linear regression analysis.

V             Data Analysis And Results:

We entered the information from the Simkin et. al. (2007) into Microsoft SharePoint server survey.

The Publication Rates Of Accounting Faculty: A Multidimensional Profile Publication Rates. Of Accounting Faculty:. A Multidimensional Profile divided the  “survey instruments into a computerized data set. Auditing of the entered data resulted in an approximate error rate of .2% for the 15% of the data subjected to random review. The two data-entry errors found were corrected.”  Their data “provides mean publication rates for all faculty combined, separated by area of research specialization and gender. These results reflect the reported number of peer-reviewed publications divided by the number of respondents reporting that specialization. Thus, we grouped the data into 6 groups of only AIS faculty by gender, and rank of assistant, associate, and full professors.

Table A

The SUMMARY OUTPUT in Table A describes the AIS rank as a function of Pubs (Publications)    and Sex (Male or Female), AIS Rank=f(Pubs,Sex).

Regression Statistics include the Multiple R 0.971985,

The Regression Statistics show the Multiple R with a value of 0.971985, and the

Following is a description of the faculty rank values and their position descriptions:

Rank Legend     

Rank      Description of Rank

1              Assistant Professors

2              Associate Professors

3              Full Professors

Table B

• * Significant at the .o5 level of statistical significance
• **  Not significant at the .o5 level of statistical significance – Less likely to have a Class Action Sex Discrimination Case!

The ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) in Table B support the summary in Table A. It shows the statistical significance of the model of AIS Rank=f(Pubs,Sex).  Table B includes the following parameters: df (Degrees of Freedom), SS (Sum of Squares), MS (Means Squares), and the F value and the Significance F.  For the Regression, these parameters have the following values of: 2,  3.779020662, 1.889510331, 25.65185978, and 0.012984867, respectively.      

Most importantly, the last 2 values reflect the test of hypothesis, rejecting the null hypothesis that entire model have zero correlation with rank with an F-value of 25.65185978 and a statistical level of confidence of 0.012984867, which is better than at the .05 level of statistical significance.

In contrast with the F and the Significance F for the entire model, only some of the individual variables are significant.  The first two namely the intercept and the Pubs are significant, but the Sex is not significant at the .05 level.  The second part of this ANOVA test shows the Coefficients, Standard Error, t Stat, and P-value, for  the Intercept 1.034536, 0.206693, 5.005184, 0.015349 and the Pubs 0.085692, 0.011964, 7.162661, 0.005605 respectively. 

Most important are the pairs of t Stat and P-value for each of the variables.  The P-values show the statistical significance being lower than the .o5 required to reject the null hypothesis, saying that in the population these variables are greater than zero, and therefore, statistically significant in making rank promotional decisions.  It suggests that the number of publications is a significant factor in promoting assistant to associate, and associate to full professor of AIS.

However, for the last variable Sex, the opposite is true, it is insignificant at the .05 level.  The  Sex, a dummy variable (1 for male and 0 for female) has the following information after the Pubs in the table, it shows the: Coefficients, Standard Error, t Stat, and P-value: Sex=-0.359907,  0.227225, -1.58392,  and 0.211378>.o5, which is the most important.  The P-value shows that Sex is not statistically significant at the .05 level, since it is higher than .05.  Therefore, we cannot reject the null hypothesis that is saying that in the population there is basically no Sex discrimination, which a coefficient that is equal to zero.

Another important piece of information is the Coefficients of Publications and Sex.  These coefficients reveal that on the average the Pubs with a value of 0.085692079, implies that it takes 1 publication per rank.  Or, in other words, as an Assistant professor would need another publication over and above the Intercept of 1, or about 2 publications to be ranked as an Associate professor and an Associate Professor may need about 1 additional publication to be ranked as a Full Professor.

The Sex coefficient with a value of Sex=-0.35990673, is the most interesting from the EEOC compliance stand point.  The negativity of Sex shows that a male with a data value of 1 incurs a penalty compared to a female with a value of 0, in terms of the contribution of their publications to the promotion.  Or in other words, on the average male AIS faculty members may need more publications to be promoted compared to their female counterparts.  It may reflect the fact that in the sample female faculty member published less then male faculty members of the same rank.  However, it is not sufficiently statistically significant to generalize it to the entire population, and therefore, we can conclude that there is no evident of sex discrimination in promotion decisions for AIS professors, in the population.

Table C

• * Significant at the .o5 level of statistical significance

F-Test Two-Sample for Variances in Table C shows how Pubs differ between Sexes.  Thus, it shows that we can reject the null hypothesis saying that male AIS faculty members do not have a significantly higher publication records compared to female AIS faculty members.  We reject it in favor of the alternative hypothesis, stating that male AIS faculty members tend to have a larger number of publications, per rank (assistant, associate and full professors).  In other words, the model can discriminate between the publications based on the sex of the AIS faculty member as there is no significant difference among male and female AIS faculty publications, in favor of the F value of  360.7288889,  using a P(F<=f) one-tail test with a value of 2.17647E-06, which is way lower than the F Critical one-tail value of 5.050329058.  Therefore, it is significant at the .05 level of statistical significance or better.

Just because discrimination may exist in the model, it may not exist in the population.  Further, even if there is discrimination in the population, it does not mean that it is illegal.  For example, it is possible that male AIS faculty members have more publications, indicating reverse discrimination, or discrimination against the male populations, which may not be illegal, as opposed to discrimination against the female population, which may be illegal.                              

VI            Data Collection

                This is a description of how data can be collected to continuously test for regulatory compliance, such as Sex discrimination compliance with the EEOC.  The Microsoft ® SharePoint ® server will collect the data, regress the Rank promotion on Sex, test the significance and issue a warning as soon as it finds statistically significant Sex affect on Rank.

Screen Shot 1

Screen Shot 1 describes how to setup the survey online for a lay-person (not an IT professional), such as a paralegal, a forensic auditor etc.  After selecting from a menu, the option to display a survey the user will start picking up questions. In step 6, the user will pick multiple choice questions.  In our case, the system will apply to the rank of the professor that joins a class or responds to the survey.  Thus, the question will read as follows:

What is your rank?

1. Adjunct Professor
2. Assistant Professor
3. Associate Professor
4. Full Professor
5. None of the above

As the tip suggests “On the <Survey Name>: New Question page, in the Question box, type the question you want to ask, and then select the type of answer you want.”

Screen Shot 2

Screen Shot 2 shows some of the advantages of an interactive online survey over a traditional survey, which is the branching capability.  As the instructions suggest  that branching lets you simplify your surveys for your respondents by displaying only questions that are relevant to each respondent. Questions that are not relevant are not displayed. The relevance is determined by the respondent’s answer to the preceding question.  For example, you might have the following questions in your survey:”

For our survey, we will as the following:

1. Are you an Accounting Faculty Member? (choices: Yes or No)
2. What sub-specialty are you? (choices: AIS, Audit, Tax, Financial, Managerial, Governmental, Others)
3. For which department do you work?

If a survey respondent’s answer to question 1 is “No,” question 2 becomes irrelevant. Using branching, only respondents who choose “Yes” for question 1 will be asked question 2. All others are taken directly to question 3.

Screen Shot 3

Screen Shot 3 shows another advantage of an online survey, the ability to preview the survey and find out if the survey developer made mistakes, and correct them ASAP.  Likewise, the user can create an e-mail message and include hyperlinks, as the instructions suggest: “After confirming that your survey operates as intended, send the survey. Rather than sending an e-mail message with a link to the home page of a team site, you can send a URL (Universal Resource Locator) that takes survey recipients directly to the survey.”  Entering the information directly into the survey by-passes the problems with e-mail delivery that can be delayed and misclassified as “junk mail,” never reaching its destination.   Thus, we “create an e-mail message, and paste the survey address into the message. Your respondents will be able to click the link to go directly to the survey.”

Screen Shot 4

                Screen Shot 4 shows some instructions: “When drafting the e-mail message to survey recipients, be sure to include the following: 1) a concise description of what data the survey will collect, 2) an explanation of how this data will be used, 3) how long the survey will take to complete, and 4) whether the survey is anonymous.”  In our case such a tip is very important since most people disregard the survey as a waste of time and fail to respond, or fail to respond accurately.  So it is important to explain the rationale for the survey as follows:

1) A concise description of what data the survey will collect: this an EEOC anti-discrimination class action suit survey,

2) An explanation of how this data will be used: the data will be used exclusively for testing whether you are entitled to get paid due to illegal Sex discrimination against you (a respondent maybe more likely to respond knowing that it is not just an “academic” survey,

3) How long the survey will take to complete: this survey will take only 5 minutes to complete , and

4) Whether the survey is anonymous: we need to get your information to decide whether the organization discriminated against you, and we need to verify it (most of it is available publicly such as Sex, Publications, and Rank) so it can not be anonymous.

Another advantage is  the graphical summary of responses. An example of a graphical summary is shown which helps the respondents avoid mistakes as they can see graphically their responses and how it compares to the average of all other responses.  So for example, when we ask for a number of refereed journal articles, of top journals, a faculty member will not enter journal not listed on a hyperlinked “top journals” list, and overstate their publication rate unintentionally.  Otherwise, we may have to remove outliers of faculty members that say that they have published several hundred articles..

Most important advantage is the instant and programmatic export to Microsoft Excel, which can calculate the regression analysis, and issue an alert based on predetermined conditions of deviations from the standard.  Much like management by exception, we can get an alert only in the case that the variance is significant, exceptional, and warrants additional rapid action.

“The overall mean publication rate was 15.4 articles per capita. This means that that the average accountant in our survey, regardless of rank, years of service, or gender, had published over 15 blind-refereed articles to date.”  Outliers with publications in excess of 100 blind-refereed publications.”  Simkin et. al. also “notes that male respondents had an overall mean rate of 18.0 publications per person, compared to female respondents of 8.6 publications.  This gender differential is consistent with earlier studies, and exactly mimics Zuckerman’s findings that women publish about 50 percent as much as men do (Zuckerman, 1987).  But is it possible that there are a relatively larger number of females in the lower academic ranks, and perhaps have merely lacked the time to publish?”

They ” also indicate that the mean number of publications reported for all male faculty members (i.e., in the columns labeled “All”) was higher at each rank than for female faculty. For example, the mean number of publications was 4.7 for male assistant professors compared to “2.7” for female assistant professors. The values for associate professors were “12.6” (for males) versus “8.5” (for females), and for full professors was “29.0” (males) versus “22.6” (females). 

These results suggest that the gender differential in mean total publications… cannot be explained by the fact that a higher percentage of the females answering our survey happened to be assistant professors with a smaller number of publications.  We also note that these gender differences appear to apply across the sub-disciplines of accounting, with the notable exception of AIS Assistant professors .. in which females out-published males.  However, the number of respondents .. is small (5 respondents in total for the AIS category) making generalizations difficult.  

A number of factors are likely to affect the publication rates of accounting faculty.  One of the most important is employment longevity—i.e., the length of time that has passed after receiving a doctorate.  To ascertain whether the lower numbers of publications reported by female accountants is indicative of the fact that women have only recently had increased numbers in the profession, we scaled the number of publications reported by the number of years since the respondent completed his or her doctorate.”

Further they find that “the research outputs of the various accounting specialties are inconsistent across the sub-disciplines.”  Therefore, it may be important to focus on each specialty separately, rather than mixing them up.  Accordingly, we have focused on AIS, to avoid mixing incomparable accounting sub-specialties, such as the following: AIS (Accounting Information Systems), Audit, Financial, Managerial, Tax and other Accounting sub specialties.”

VII          Future Studies

                Future studies should supplement the self-reported data, with verification of publicly available data on the Internet WWW (World Wide Web).  We can easily verify the answers to questions dealing with whether a school recently installed or discontinued a Ph.D. program.  Smaller sample sizes should be much easier to expand if the entire process is conducted automatically on a web server over the Internet   It should be cheaper, faster, and less error prone, thus more accurate.

Most importantly, an online interactive survey lets us constantly update it and bypass intermediaries that slow down the process, and make it more error prone.  Likewise, using a web server and e-mail communication is a much more effective and  less costly compared to a traditional paper based surveys.  So in the future it should become more popular as the technology improves and becomes more user friendly.

Also, the data can be verified (as Simkin et. al. suggest) “by looking at adjustments for “co-authorship” in its research productivity measure…“research quality”— academic and practitioner-oriented journals, hard-copy versus electronic journals, peer-reviewed versus internally-reviewed publications, or journals whose policies first require conference presentations at regional or national meetings.”

VIII         Summary, Conclusions And Implications

Class Action Sex Discrimination law suits have become more prominent and more costly in recent years.  Therefore, their Prevention Controls may also become more important.  We have looked at the case of  AIS faculty promotion from a forensic audit, expert witness testimony & computer litigation support stand point.

In summary, we have performed a multiple linear regression and developed a model that forecasts promotions of AIS faculty as a function of Publications and Sex.  We have demonstrated that the model is accurate and reliable for AIS promotional decisions, and it is statistically significant.    Likewise, we demonstrated that while the model is significant the Sex variable by itself is not significant, and that is a sort of a test for compliance with anti-discrimination regulations such as the EEOC.  We also suggested a different survey methodology, instead of the traditional paper survey, we suggest an online survey running on a WWW server, using Microsoft SharePoint software to continuously update the results automatically.

In conclusion, we found that at the present time it appears that there is no evidence of discrimination in the population of AIS faculty promotion, but this may change in the future.  We confirmed previous finding of differences in publication between the genders.  However, these differences were not statistically significant and therefore cannot be generalized to the population.

The implications of our study is that in a future time Sex discrimination may become a problem and class action law suits may spread into the academic environment.  For that reason we suggest automating the process of data collection and data analysis that will help flag risks of compliance and the absence of compliance with regulatory enforcement.

Such online interactive continuous surveys and regression analysis of the results can be an effective internal control and a preventive control for regulatory compliance.  Likewise, it can also serve as a method to determine whether or not discrimination exists, and if it does what is the size of the bias in favor on one sex and against the other sex.

References

Alexander, John C., Jr., and Rodney H. Mabry “Relative Significance of Journals, Authors, and Articles Cited in Financial Research” Journal of Finance vol. 49, no. 2 (June, 1994), pp. 697-712.

Brown, Lawrence D. and John C. Garnder “Applying Citation Analysis to Evaluate the Research Contributions of Accounting Faculty and Doctoral Programs”  The Accounting Review vol. 60, no. 2 (April, 1985), pp. 262-276.

Brown, Lawrence D. and John C. Gardner “Using Citation Analysis to Assess the Impact of Journals and Articles on Contemporary Accounting Research” Journal of Accounting Research vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring, 1985), pp. 84-109.

Campbell, David R. and Robert G. Morgan “Publication Activity of Promoted Accounting Faculty” Issues in Accounting Education (Spring, 1987), pp. 28-43.

Christensen, Anne L. Catherine A. Finger, and Claire K. Latham, “New Accounting Scholars' Publications in Accounting and Nonaccounting Journals,” Issues in Accounting Education vol. 17, no. 3 (Aug, 2002), pp. 233-238.

Daigle, Ronald J. and Vicky Arnold “An Analysis of the Research Productivity of AIS Faculty” International Journal of Accounting Information Systems  vol.1, no. 2 (Sept, 2000), pp. 106-122.

Dwyer, Peggy D. “Gender Differences in the Scholarly Activities of Accounting Academics: An Empirical Investigation” Issues in Accounting Education (Fall, 1994), pp. 231-243.

Englebrecht, Ted D., Govind S. Iyer, and Denise M. Patterson “An Empirical Investigation of the Publication Productivity of Promoted Accounting Faculty” Accounting Horizons (March, 1994), pp. 45-68.

Hasselback, James R., Alan Reinstein, and Edward S. Schwan “Benchmarks for Evaluating the Research Productivity of Accounting Faculty” Journal of Accounting Education (June, 2000), pp. 79-97.

Hasselback, J. R., and Alan Reinstein “A Proposal for Measuring Scholarly Productivity of Accounting Faculty” Issues in Accounting Education (Fall, 1995), pp. 269-306.

Hasselback, James R. and Alan Reinstein “Assessing Accounting Doctoral Programs by Their Graduates’ Research Productivity” Advances in Accounting( 1995), pp. 61-86.

Hult, G. Thomas M., William T. Neese, and R. Edward Bashaw “Faculty Perceptions of Marketing Journals” Journal of Marketing Education (Spring, 1997), pp. 37-52.

Heck, J. L., R.E. Jensen, and P. L. Cooley “An Analysis of Contributors to Accounting Journals” International Journal of Accounting Education Part I vol. 25, no. 1 (1990), pp. 202-217, Part II vol. 26, no. 1 (1991), pp. 1-17.

Maranto, Cheryl L. and Carolyn A. Streuly “The Determinants of Accounting Professor’s Publishing Productivity—the Early Career” Contemporary Accounting Research (Spring, 1994), pp. 387-407.

Patel, Marilyn, “Are you a current or former female employee of Costco who sought advancement to management?  http://genderclassactionagainstcostco.com/costco94.pl

Pierce, Barbara and Garnet Garven, “Publishing International Business Research: A Survey of Leading Journals” Journal of International Business Research vol. 26, no. 1 (1995), pp. 69-89.

Read, William J., D. V.  Rama, and K. Raghunandan “Are Publication Requirements for Accounting Faculty Promotions Still Increasing? Issues in Accounting Education (May, 1998), pp. 328-339.

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Education, Scheduling and Administration Related to Computer User Satisfaction: An Interactive On-line Expert System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails Through Telecommunication Networks," International Journal Of Applied Engineering Education, Vol. 3, No. 4, 399-412, 1987.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Training Software Case Study: A Product Evaluation and Selection System", Journal Of Education For Business, 1989

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Matching Program Code Generators to Software Developers' Needs", OMEGA: The International Journal Of Management Science, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1990

Rushinek, A. and S. Rushinek  “Using Experts for Detecting and Litigating Computer Crime”  Managerial Auditing Journal, 1993 - emeraldinsight.com ISSN: 0268-6902

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Project Management Software Feature Profitability: Windows, Networks, Mainframes, Filtered Task Diagrams, Schedules, and Calendars, Journal Of Computer Information Systems (JCIS), Vol. 37, No. 4, Summer 1997, 48-55

Rushinek, A. and S. Rushinek  “Internet Fraud Auditing: A Simulated Health Care Industry Case Study” - Journal of Forensic Accounting, 2000 - rtedwards.com

Rushinek, A. and S. Rushinek  “What Makes Users Unhappy: Share-Point Team Services Web Server Security” Ubiquity, Volume 6, Issue2, Jan. 25 - Feb. 1, 2005.

Schultz, Joseph J. Jr., Janet A. Meade, and Inder Khurana “The Changing Roles of Teaching, Research, and Service in the Promotion and Tenure Decisions for Accounting Faculty” Issues in Accounting Education (Spring, 1999), pp. 109-119.

 Sebok, Anthony,  “The Huge Class Action Sex Discrimination Suit against Wal-Mart: Should It Proceed as a Class Action, or be Decertified?”  http://writ.news.findlaw.com/sebok/20040809.html

Streuly, Carolyn A. and Cheryl L. Maranto “Accounting Faculty Research Productivity Citations:  Are there Gender Differences?”  Issues in Accounting Education (Fall, 1994), pp. 247-255.

Simkin, Mark G. and Stephen Kerr Richard Mason, "Publication Rates Of Accounting Faculty: A Multidimensional Profile" 2007 Oxford Business & Economic Conference, ISBN : 978-0-9742114-7-3

Wong, Heather, and Beth Alexander, “Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Smith Barney”, http://www.genderlawsuitagainstsmithbarney.com, May, 2008

Van Fleet, David D., Abagail. McWilliams, and Donald S. Seigel “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Journal Rankings:  The Case of Formal Lists” Journal of Management vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 839-861.

Zivney, Terry L., William J. Bertin, and Thomas A. Gavin “A Comprehensive Examination of Accounting Faculty Publishing” Issues in Accounting Education (Spring, 1995), pp. 1-10.

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The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging

Technology in the Managerial Accounting Course

Mark Friedman

Avi Rushinek

Sara Rushinek

University of Miami

Abstract

Emerging technology gives us the ability to harness the power of the computer as

a tool to improve student achievement. A comprehensive managerial accounting

case-study, Light (Building Block of Accounting – A Managerial Perspective, I See

The Light), has been created using these emerging technologies to create the

following: a unique case for each student, an artificial intelligent grading modular, a

twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week high speed feedback modular capable

of providing unlimited feedback, all with no additional instructor resources. We can

now provide students with an internet leaning tool never before possible. Based on

previous studies, this tool may be able to improve students’ attitude and

performance. In this study, students downloaded Light from an internet site,

http://www.cybertext.com, worked at their own pace and uploaded an answer

sheet whenever they wanted feedback. Cybertext graded the students' solution

every time they uploaded their work to the server, keeping the latest score as the

case study score. A multiple regression analysis of the final exam score on the

case study score and the number of uploads the students used was analyzed.

This study rejected the null hypothesis stating that this case study has no affect

on the student’s performance in the final exam score, concluding that it has

statistically significant effect on the student’s performance in the course’s final

exam.

Introduction and Literature Review

Technology creates an environment in which activities can be changed. Ehrmann

(2001) indicated that technology by itself does not enhance learning; tools must be created

which can harness the new technology. Computer based case studies, which have

harnessed the technology of their time, have been successfully used in accounting over

the last few decades. Friedman (1980) applied it to solving problems in Intermediate

Accounting, Rushinek & Rushinek (1984) have applied it to Modeling, to CAD-CAM

(1987), to financial planning (1988), and to the health care industry (2000). The unique

aspect of the present study is the automated grading of multiple case studies uploads to a

web server.

Rushinek, Rushinek & Stutz (1983) have demonstrated that Computer Based Training

(CBT) can improve students' attitudes and performances. This case dealt with "Systems

Quality Control through Measuring Users' Attitudes for Acquisition, Implementation,

26 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Maintenance and Modification Decisions: An Empirical Analysis of Management by

Exception," which is closely related to our current study of Managerial Accounting.

Gelinas, Levy and Thibodeau concluded that successful integration of information

technology requires its incorporation throughout the objectives of the course. Likewise,

Rushinek, Rushinek, and Stutz (1985) studied the "Relationship of Computer Users'

Performance to their Attitudes toward Interactive Software." In this study, students

control the number of times that they upload the case to the web server. Due to the

sense of control that the students have they should experience a gain in performance.

Rushinek and Rushinek (1986) show that "What Makes Users” of computer systems

“happy," is a sense of control. The students' ability to upload their work to the server

provides them with a sense of control that should enhance motivation and eventually

performance.

Rushinek and Rushinek (1990) show how "Control through Standard Costs and

Variance Analysis” affects “Performance Evaluation." Rushinek and Rushinek show the

same pattern in the "Health Care Delivery and Professional Effectiveness” as it relates to

“Surgical Performance & Decision Making", our current study applies the same principles

to students’ performance in the final exam of Managerial Accounting classes. This has

been especially prominent in computer based training or computer assisted instructions.

For example, Rushinek and Rushinek show that "User Participation in the Development of

an Interactive Computer Assisted Instructional Task improves their performance and

attitudes. "The Effects of Computer Assisted Instruction upon Computer Facility and

Instructor Ratings," may also be positive due to the students’ improved attitude and

motivation (Rushinek and Rushinek, November 1981).

Based on these theories, this study sets the hypothesis that this case study will have a

positive effect on the performance of students on the final exam. Or alternatively, the null

hypothesis, the case study has no effect on the overall final exam score will be rejected at

the .05 level of statistical confidence.

The Instrument

Light (Building Block of Accounting – A Managerial Perspective, I See The Light) is

a comprehensive managerial accounting case covering the major topics in a traditional

managerial accounting class. Throughout the case, the owner of a children’s lamp

manufacturing company requests information from the students based upon last year’s

financial information and projected cost increases for the upcoming year. The students

deliverables include: projected variable and fixed costs, cost volume relationships at

different levels of net income, detailed budgets with changes in raw material and finished

goods inventories, process costing, job order costing, variance analysis and capital

budgeting.

Emerging Technology

Through the use of emerging technology, there are important previously unavailable

activities, which together enhance the learning experience. These include:

· Unique case for each student

· Artificial intelligent grading modular

· Immediate feedback 24/7

· Unlimited feedback

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 27

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

· No additional instructor resources

Unique Case for Each Student

Traditionally students would purchase practice sets in the bookstore along with their

textbooks. Mass production required that all the practice sets were identical. With the

use of emerging technology the Light is available over the Internet. When the students

register, the generating modular creates a unique case for each student. The Light’s

historical information is the same for all the students and is based upon information from a

real lamp manufacturer. There are over sixty variables in the case. The generating

modular seeds the selection process from the registration information. This uniqueness

discourages students from copying other students’ work. While any computer could be

used to create the unique case the emerging technology, the universal availability of the

internet, makes it feasible to deliver the unique case to the student in an acceptable time

span, at an acceptable price.

Artificial Intelligent Grading Modular

The case builds upon itself, from the simple to the more complex. In Part 1 of the

case, the students are given historical data and unique projected increases for the

upcoming year. Based upon that information they have to determine the total variable and

total fixed costs for the following year. As illustrated in Exhibit 1, Part 2 requires the

students to use the total variable and total fixed costs, previously calculated in Part 1, to

calculate the contribution margin (Sales – Total Variable Cost). The artificial intelligence

built into the grading module gives the student credit for mastering topics based upon

earlier incorrect answers, rather than just using a static answer key. For example, a

student could be asked to determine the total variable cost and the contribution margin

when the variable manufacturing costs were $20.00, the variable selling costs were

$10.00 and the selling price was $45.00. If the student incorrectly answered that the total

variable cost was $20.00 instead of $30.00 and the contribution margin was $25.00 instead

of $15.00 ($45.00-$30.00) the traditional answer key would score both answers incorrect.

The artificial intelligence in the Light’s grading module would score the $20.00 total

variable cost incorrect while using it to determine that the contribution margin of $25.00

($45.00-$20.00) was now the correct answer.

Immediate Feedback Twenty-Four Hours A Day, Seven Days A Week

In the traditional environment the instructor would collect all of the cases at the end of

the semester. The student would receive feedback once, at the end of the semester.

With the emerging technology the server grades the cases. Since the server is always

available, students can obtain feedback on demand. The speed of transmitting the upload

has been increased and transmittal errors decreased by transferring a small 24K answer

file instead of the whole case. As shown in Exhibit 2, when the student wants to upload

they click on a textbox, “Press Here To Create Your Answer File” on the “Instruction”

sheet of the Excel workbook. The answer file is created and saved in the format

LL####ANS.xls on the directory chosen by the student. As Exhibit 2 shows, a message

box confirming the successful creation and the location of the answer file is produced.

After the answer file is created the student logs on to the Cybertext website and as

illustrated in Exhibit 3 uploads their answer file. Exhibit 4 illustrates the feedback form that

is produced by Cybertext and displayed when the Light is uploaded and automatically

graded. The student reviews and prints the feedback form.

28 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Unlimited Feedback

The students control the number of times they rework the Light and upload the

answer sheet to the Cybertext server. The server grades the case and provides feedback

to the student. The last upload is stored on the server and the last score is referred to as

the Light Score. The number of times each student uploads to the web server is

calculated and referred to as the Web Upload Factor.

No Additional Instructor Resources

In the traditional, hand-graded environment, the instructor receives all cases on the

last day of class. If the student’s work was perfect then their work compared directly to

the “official” answer sheet. As soon as one error was made, the rest of the answer sheet

was worthless. It is virtually impossible to follow all of the errors unless the grader redid

the entire case, duplicating every error. Under those circumstances, it would be humanly

impossible to grade a unique student’s case five or ten times and definitely not two

hundred times. The emerging technology of internet servers permits the students’ cases

to be graded over and over without human interaction.

The Study

Data Collection and Sample Selection

Appendix A shows the data that has been collected including the student’s first name,

last name, ID, final exam score, instructor name, GPA previous semester, GPA

subsequent, course grade, Light Score and Web Upload Factor. Out of a total of 402

students in multiple managerial accounting classes, 34 have been excluded since they did

not do the case study. Of the remaining 365 students in the sample 56 students did not

take the final exam. The number of students that missed the final reduced the sample size

to a total of 309 students.

Methods and Analysis

Table 1, the Summary Output, describes the Regression Statistics. This includes the

Multiple R, 0.142104407, or 14.21%, and its R Square 0.020193663, or 2.02%. This

shows that the Light Score explains about 2 percent of the variance in the final exam

score. The Adjusted R Square, 0.0137897, adjusted for Standard Error of 13.8463822,

shows that it may be even lower than 2%, for the observations of 309 students. These

309 students have taken both the case study and the final exam.

Table 2, the ANOVA, Analysis of Variance, shows the df, (Degrees of Freedom) the

F Statistic and the Significance F, which is the statistical significance. Regression shows

that we have two independent variables, their F-Statistic is equal to 3.153307187 and it is

statistically significant at the .05 level, which is greater than the Significance F level of

0.044101906. Accordingly, we reject the null hypothesis that states that the students’

performance on the Light has no effect on the final exam score, at the .05 level of

statistical significance.

The second part of the table reveals the following variables: Coefficients, Standard

Error, t Stat, P-value, Lower 95%, Upper 95%, Lower 95.0% and Upper 95.0%. It

reports the Light Score Coefficient of 0.072028467. The positive sign of this indicates

that the score in the case study has a positive influence on the final exam score. The t

Stat of Light Score of 1.481960849 and its P-value of 0.139379756 by itself is not

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 29

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

statistically significant at the 10% level of statistical significance. Therefore, we may not

reject the null hypothesis that states that the Light Score by itself explains the

performance in the final exam of the course. In contrast with the Light Score, the Web

Upload Factor is different.

While the Light Score by itself is not statistically significant at the 10% level, the Web

Upload Factor is significant at this level. The Web Upload Factor has a positive

Coefficient of 0.048627667, which shows that like the Light Score it has a positive

influence on the Final Exam Score for the entire course. Unlike the Light Score, it is also

significant at the 10% level of statistical significance due to its higher value of the t Stat of

1.737318012, and its respective value of P-value of 0.083337214, which is lower than

10% and therefore significant statistically at the 10% level of statistical significance.

Interpretation of the Results

The overall model is statistically significant, yet the Light Score by itself is not. The

Web Upload Factor is statistically significant. This may be due to the fact that the final

exam does not cover exclusively and completely the material that the Light covers. The

final exam of the course covers material from the textbook, which may not be perfectly

correlated to the material in the Light. The disadvantage of this is that the coefficient may

not be statistically significant by itself. The advantage is that the case study is more

generic and matches all the textbooks rather than being tied to any specific textbook. As

a result, instructors can use a variety of textbooks and still use the same case study..

The Web Upload Factor may be significant due to the fact that it demonstrates the

motivation of the students to improve their performance in the course. It is possible that

highly motivated students do well in the case study, and also study more and perform

better on the final exam. The Web Upload Factor may also be an indication of how many

times the students worked each of the problems. After working a problem three or four

times, the student may have leaned the essence of the material being tested. Thus

transferring this knowledge to a higher score on the final exam.

Table 3 shows the RESIDUAL OUTPUT, and the PROBABILITY OUTPUT. It

includes the Observation, Predicted Final Exam Score, Residuals, Standard Residuals,

Percentile, and the Final Exam Score. Table 3 shows the bottom 10, the middle 10 and

the top 10 performers in the semester, and their related prediction statistics. Table 3

shows that the worst performer in the semester had a score of 28 on the final exam. The

top performer on the test had a score of 100, or 100%. It also shows that the bottom

forecasting errors are positive (positive residuals), while the middle and the top are

negative.

The Normal Probability Plot reveals that the Final Exam Scores cluster around the

10%, 50% and 100% percentile. The Uploads Line Fit Plot shows that most students

uploaded less than 50 times, while a few uploaded more than 100 times. Likewise, the

Predicted Final Exam Scores thin line cuts in the middle of the Final Exam Score line,

explaining graphically the significance of the coefficient of the number of Uploads. It

clusters around the value of 1 indicating that many students uploaded only once.

Summary, Conclusions, and Implications

In summary, we have tested and rejected the main null hypothesis that the Light case

study has no effect on students' performance in the final exam of a Managerial

30 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Accounting class. We also found that the number of Web Uploads has a higher statistical

significance compared to the Light Score. We suspect that that may be due to the

correlation or lack of correlation between the textbook and the case study material. This

can be easily tested in the future by changing the correlation between the case study

material and the contents of the textbook.

Our conclusion is that the trend to integrate the computer assisted instruction, spread

sheet analysis, and web server based grading is going to increase due to the positive

affect on students’ performance. Furthermore, since multiple uploads improve

performance and do not require additional instructor resources, instructors may be more

likely to use it, promoting student mastery of the material.

The implication of the results of this study is that more resources should be devoted to

evaluating the effect of such Light training methods in order to further improve their

academic effectiveness as well as its cost effectiveness. As software becomes more

internet compliant such applications will be much more robust and much easier to develop

and use. Therefore, we expect them to grow exponentially with the growth of the

Internet.

Try it for free?

If you want to try the case yourself, simply go to www.cybertext.com, select Book

List and then select Building Blocks of Accounting- A Managerial Perspective and you

will be able to download the application by using the username “MF5678” and the

password “1234”. To have the work graded return to the same page.

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 31

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

Literature References

Ehrmann, S. “Computer-intensive academic programs,” ACCOUNTING EDUCATION NEWS,

7-9, Spring 2001

Friedman, M. “The Effect on Achievement of Using the Computer as a Problem Solving Tool in

the Intermediate Accounting Course,” ACCOUNTING REVIEW, Vol. 55, Issue 1, January 1980.

Friedman, M. and Munter, P. “The Integration of Technology into the Fundamental

Accounting Courses,” THE NATIONAL ACCOUNTING JOURNAL, Vol 3, Number 1, Fall/Winter

2002.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "User Participation in the Development of an Interactive

Computer Assisted Instructional Task," JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

SYSTEMS, Vol. 10, No. 2, 165-174, Fall 1981.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Computer Assisted Instruction upon Comp uter

Facility and Instructor Ratings," JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-BASED INSTRUCTION, Vol. 8, No. 2,

43-46, November 1981.

Rushinek, A., Rushinek, S. and Stutz, J. "Systems Quality Control Through Measuring Users'

Attitudes for Acquisition, Implementation, Maintenance and Modification Decisions: An Empirical

Analysis of Management by Exception," THE JOURNAL OF DATA EDUCATION, Vol. 23, No. 3,

16-19, Spring 1983.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Measuring and Forecasting Overall Satisfaction of Computer

Systems: A Case Study," ADVANCES OF MODELLING AND SIMULATION TECHNIQUES IN

ENTERPRISES REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 4, 34-51, 1984.

Rushinek, A., Rushinek, S. and Stutz, J. "Relationship of Computer Users' Performance to their

Attitudes toward Interactive Software," JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

SYSTEMS, Vol. 13, No. 4, spring 1985.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy," COMMUNICATIONS OF THE

ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY (ACM), Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "CAD-CAM (Computer Assisted Design- Computer Assisted

Manufacturing) Electronic Design Case Study: A Needs Assessment for Microcomputer Users,

Vendors and Consultants," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING

EDUCATION, Vol. 3, No. 3, 299-306, 1987.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Financial Planning (FP) Case Study: Feature Selection System

(FSS) for Microcomputer Users & Manufacturers,” SINGAPORE ACCOUNTANT, Vol.4, No.10,

October 1988.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Control through Standard Costs and Variance Analysis for

Performance Evaluation," ECONOMIC PLANNING Vol. 26, No. 2, 3-8, April, 1990.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Health Care Delivery and Professional Effectiveness:

Centralization, Staff Admission, Surgical Performance, & Decision Making", INTERNATIONAL

JOURNAL OF REHABILITATION RESEARCH, Vol. 13, No.4, 1990.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. “Internet Fraud Auditing: A Simulated Health Care Industry

Case Study”, JOURNAL OF FORENSIC ACCOUNTING, Vol. 1, No. 1, 125-234, 2000.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. “The Role of the Forensic Accountant in Calculating the

Damages Using the ‘But-if Analysis in a Case of Internet Day Trader & Online Broker Misconduct

Litigation”, JOURNAL OF FORENSIC ACCOUNTING, 2001.

Ulric G., Elliott L. and Jay T. “Norwood Office Supply, Inc.: A teaching case to integrate

computer assisted auditing techniques into the auditing course”, ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING

EDUCATION, Vol. 16, Iss. 4, 603-637, 2001.

32 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

.

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 33

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

Exhibit 1

Sample Illustration

34 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Exhibit 2

Creating The Answer Workbook

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 35

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

Exhibit 3

Upload To www.cybertext.com

36 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Exhibit 4

Student Feedback

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 37

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

Table 1: Summary Output

Regression Statistics

Multiple R 0.142104407 14.21%

R Square 0.020193663 2.02%

Adjusted R Square 0.0137897

Standard Error 13.8463822

Observations 309

Table 2: ANOVA

df SS MS F Significance F

Regression 2 1209.1186 604.55931 3.1533072 0.0441019

Residual 306 58667.024 191.7223

Total 308 59876.142

Coefficients

Standard

Error

t Stat P-value Lower 95% Upper 95% Lower 95.0%Upper 95.0%

Intercept 62.730577 4.3439253 14.440989 2.093E-36 54.182834 71.27832 54.182834 71.27832

Light grade 0.0720285 0.0486035 1.4819608 0.1393798 -0.0236109 0.1676678 -0.0236109 0.1676678

Uploads 0.0486277 0.0279901 1.737318 0.0833372 -0.0064497 0.103705 -0.0064497 0.103705

38 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

Table 3: Residual Output And Probability Output

RESIDUAL OUTPUT PROBABILITY OUTPUT

Observation

Predicted Final

Exam Grade Residuals

Standard

Residuals Percentile

Final

ExamGrad

e

1 66.164543 11.8354572 0.85755774 0.1618123 28

2 66.504936 9.49506357 0.68798062 0.4854369 32

3 67.960114 -7.9601143 -0.5767633 0.8090615 36

4 68.655172 9.34482788 0.67709505 1.1326861 38

5 69.524992 -5.5249919 -0.4003225 1.4563107 38

6 68.015708 -10.015708 -0.7257048 1.7799353 42

7 67.893226 12.106774 0.87721645 2.1035599 42

8 68.591936 -4.5919359 -0.3327164 2.4271845 42

9 69.315873 2.68412728 0.19448291 2.7508091 42

10 70.434309 17.5656909 1.27275135 3.0744337 42

AVERAGE 3.49391906 0.25315772 1.618123 38.2

150 70.127935 -20.127935 -1.458403 140 48.381877 72

151 70.322445 -22.322445 -1.6174099 141 48.705502 72

152 72.170297 1.82970345 0.13257421 142 49.029126 72

153 73.045595 -3.0455946 -0.2206736 143 49.352751 72

154 64.608795 27.3912045 1.98467528 144 49.676375 72

155 68.82263 -16.82263 -1.2189116 145 50 72

156 69.252975 -17.252975 -1.250093 146 50.323625 72

157 73.595107 -35.595107 -2.5791027 147 50.647249 72

158 70.212745 -16.212745 -1.1747214 148 50.970874 72

159 70.23432 7.76567981 0.56267525 149 51.294498 72

160 69.576934 12.4230663 0.90013393 150 51.618123 72

AVERAGE -6.1841843 -0.4480854 50.161812 72

299 71.176168 14.8238315 1.07408537 96.601942 92

300 69.910023 -25.910023 -1.8773538 96.925566 92

301 70.007278 -12.007278 -0.8700073 97.249191 92

302 70.444927 -10.444927 -0.7568046 97.572816 94

303 70.931204 5.06879593 0.36726804 97.89644 94

304 69.982052 -27.982052 -2.0274861 98.220065 96

305 69.982052 -37.982052 -2.7520527 98.543689 96

306 70.030679 -0.0306792 -0.0022229 98.867314 96

307 70.662839 3.33716114 0.24179956 99.190939 98

308 70.954605 -8.9546049 -0.6488208 99.514563 100

309 72.802456 1.19754378 0.08677003 99.838188 100

AVERAGE -11.370812 -0.8238911 98.381877 95.8

The Effect on Achievement of Using Emerging Technology 39

The Accounting Educators’ Journal

The Normal Probability Plot

Light Grade Line Fit Plot

40 Friedman, Rushinek, and Rushinek

The Accounting Educators’ Journal, 2006

The university of DVD

- ►itu.dk [PDF] 
A Rushinek, S Rushinek - Ubiquity, 2003 - portal.acm.org
... by, the law will catch up with the technology. ... They will provide additional information
on this topic upon ... Oxley & Basel II Compliance Forensic Accounting, Web ...
All 5 versions

[CITATION] 8-6-2005-Call4Jury-Saturday9-5pm- …

I Audience, S Rushinek, A Rushinek, P Avi

The University of DVD

Universities and training organizations increasingly use technology to record and distribute original material, bringing on a new class of technological and legal issues.

By Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

The topics of DVD copying, distributing, Web-casting, publishing, ecommerce and peer-to-peer file sharing bring to mind illegal copying of the entertainment industry's proprietary digital contents. Often overlooked is the other side of the coin, original material that authors and publishers want to distribute in a cost-effective and timely basis.

This article explores using the Internet to post and distribute original material, rather than simply consuming content or distributing copyrighted material. We specifically address issues concerning universities that record, copy and distribute instructors' lectures onto DVDs. Students who miss a class or who wish to review the class again at their own pace would find these DVDs helpful. From this simple concept, many questions arise: Since students have already paid for the class, should they be given the DVDs for free? Or should the university collect a fee to cover the costs to record and store the DVDs? Should the university let students burn copies of the original in the library for free, or should the university charge for this activity to cover the cost of the equipment used to burn CDs?

What are the ramifications for universities that Web-cast or publish duplicates and resell DVDs at the college bookstore? Taking it a step further, are there further repercussions if a university also publishes the DVDs with the textbook publisher as a supplement or a replacement of the textbook used in the recorded class? What about ePublishing and selling DVDs on a university's or publisher's ecommerce Website? The material would then be available not only to students enrolled in the courses but also to the worldwide community of the Web.

Digital Streamable Media

Digital streamable media can be sold over the Web for minimal cost and time to the seller. In contrast, physical media such as DVD disks are a bit more expensive and time-consuming to produce. This provides an opportunity for universities to profit from the medium itself. The university can sell blank DVDs and then charge students for using the school's burners to copy an original checked out of the library. Likewise, the university can duplicate the DVD and charge even more for the DVD plus the content.

Free Peer-To-Peer File Sharing Servers

Free peer-to-peer file sharing servers for student lecture exchange could enhance student learning. It may help students to make up a missed class or allow students to review a lecture. And, it may provide the instructor with timely and effective feedback about the quality of the distributed lectures.

Confusion and Opportunity

Choosing the right technology for storing and distributing lectures can be tricky. Each medium has potential drawbacks and opportunities.

DVDs

It would be nice if there were only one kind of DVD disk that would play in any DVD player. Such is not the case. They are many DVD formats, some of which are incompatible with each other. What are some of these DVDs and their incompatibility issues?

Well, there are DVD-/+R, DVD-/+RW and DVD-RAM. There are 5.25-inch full size DVDs and 3.5-inch half-size mini DVDs. These DVDs have different capacities, for example a single side 5.25-inch DVD-RAM has the capacity of 4.7 GB, whereas a double-sided (DS) has the capacity of 9.4 GB. Yet, a 3.5-inch DS DVD-RAM has the capacity of 2.9 GB unformatted and 2.4 formatted. Most DVD readers and burners that can read and/or write DVD+RW cannot read and/or write DVD-RAM.

The confusion is obvious, but what is the opportunity? Well, now vendors can sell you two DVD drives. If you want to read and write all the formats, you must buy at least one DVD reader and writer that can read and/or read and write DVD-/+ and a second DVD that can read or read and write the incompatible DVD-RAM format.

Maybe you don't want to have all the formats. Why not go with one format and avoid the others? This is not the best solution because each format is optimized for different applications. For example, if the application requires a reliability level of up to 100,000 reads and writes, as is the case for some for medical, legal or military uses, then you should use the DVD-RAM format, which is certified for a high level of reliability and performance.

CDs and Other Removable Media

Similar issues arise with CDs and other removable media. CDs come in 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch CD-R, CD-RW, CDG (Graphic) and more. Likewise, there are Smart Media cards, Multi-Media Cards (MMC), Secure Media Cards (SMC), Flash Memory cards, and Sony's Memory Sticks, ranging in capacity from 8 MB to 1 GB, and a variety of PCMCIA cards.

In addition, different digital formats can apply to the same media. For example, a DVD-RAM disk can store several different video formats optimized for different applications. For example, on a given DVD-RAM disk you can store .VRO (Video Recording Objects) optimized for editing on a standalone DVD. On the same disk, alternatively, you can store the same video information in a different format, such as MPEG1, 2 and 4 with different compression (resolution) rates optimized for progressive download and playback from a Web site on a computer.

Audio

The confusion and opportunity applies also to audio. The audio version of a video lecture is another potential product. An organization could sell an audio CD or DVD, in addition to the video. Why would somebody want to buy both? Perhaps a student wishes to listen to the lecture while driving or jogging. An advantage to audio-only is that it fits in less space than audio and video, and requires lower bandwidth for streaming. Audio files can be AVI, MP3 (optimized for playback on standalone) or downloaded from the Web. A variety of proprietary formats such as Sony and Dictaphone are optimized for dictation and voice-to-text automated transcription.

The potential for confusion is obvious. To convert from one format to another digitally, you must play it back and re-record it, which is time-consuming and degrading to the quality. You never know how to decode and re-encode it.

The opportunity is that an organization can sell not only the video and standalone audio but also the printed automated transcript. An automated transcript may not be as good as a manually corrected and edited version of a lecture, but it is much faster and cheaper to generate. That near-instant response will surely please users who like to minimize wait time.

Is All of this Recording and Distributing Legal?

Let us suppose that the instructors are willing to let the university distribute their trade secrets on the Web and expose them to unlimited scrutiny, all for a dubious earning potential. Furthermore, let us also suppose that the university is interested in participating in this effort for the good of the students and the profit opportunities. What are the potential problems?

There is a sub-web of patents and pending patents related to these activities, not withstanding the piracy and copyright issues that a Google search of "DVD copying, distributing, Web-casting, publishing" is quick to bring up. What are examples of such patents and what are the risks for users and providers?

The Risk of Litigation

Universities may face a risk of infringing on patents. For example, consider the case of a lawsuit that Friskit, Inc. www.friskit.com brought against RealNetworks and Listen.com. Friskit is a technology licensing company that enables consumers to find, personalize and play streaming media. The company claims that its patented technologies are essential for on-demand media subscription services. In a suit filed in Chicago on June 27, Friskit charges that RealNetworks and Listen.com use Friskit's core technology and key features to provide their services. The suit asks for revenues from sales of both the players and subscription products. A university, or a publisher working with a university, that streams content in the manner of RealNetworks and Listen.com may be at risk of a lawsuit.

There are other patent issues that could become a concern. Say that a university wants to distribute its contents, using a "DVD generator". Would the university be infringing on the technology of a company such as DVDemand.com www.DVDemand.com/supersite/products.asp?menuid=M1 whose "DVD Generator" allows students to pick and choose media clips and burn DVDs to order?

For these reasons it would be worthwhile for the university or publisher to hire an expert to produce a cost benefit analysis of each alternative. What is the cost of a license agreement? Would it be better to negotiate such a license agreement or to offer the service and take the risk of being sued?

Conclusion

In summary, we have looked at a variety of ways that universities could distribute original digital contents and media. While this service could helpful for students, universities should consider potential pitfalls, from the mundane — which medium should you use — to the potentially litigious issue of patent infringement. There are many questions that remain to be answered. Our conclusion is that the confusion level correlates with the opportunities, and the law can hardly keep up with the technology. Organizations will try to balance the advantages and disadvantages to deploying technology. At this stage, there are more questions than comprehensive and conclusive answers. As time goes by, the law will catch up with the technology. In the meantime, we will have to deal with the uncertainty, keep documenting our questions, and trigger the thoughts that will eventually help produce the answers.

The authors are professors at the University of Miami and board members of The Institute of Internal Auditors. They will provide additional information on this topic upon written request. Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e-commerce security and controls; HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability), Sarbanes-Oxley & Basel II Compliance Forensic Accounting, Web marketing ROI, e-learning, and Internet domain copyright, trademarks and patents ROI. Sara Rushinek's research interests include business intelligence and data mining for decision-making, electronic stock trading; and e-commerce security of enterprise resource management.

Source: Ubiquity, Volume 4, Issue 41, Dec. 10 -16, 2003

Forum

Related articles - All 3 versions

What Makes a Publisher Important?

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What Makes Users Unhappy:
Share-Point Team Services Web Server Security

By Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

Computer & Internet Security is very important but sometimes it is so confusing and frustrating that it makes users very unhappy— to a point where the system is so secure that it cannot be used by its most legitimate users, like system administrators

For more than 20 years we have written about user satisfaction, and it seems as if even with all the changes during this time, some things remain the same (See reference list). For example, our article about "What Makes Users Happy" (COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY, Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986) shows that system response time is the single most important factor. But it seems that sometimes the design of software slows down the system response time to a level that can make users very unhappy. Such a case in point is the Microsoft IIS & SPTS — Internet Information Server and Share Point Team Services.

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT

I have installed Microsoft SharePoint on one of the Web servers that I administer. Even though I have done it at least 30 times before, I still have problems with it. Microsoft SharePoint Team Services is a Web application that Microsoft bundled with Microsoft Office 2000/2002, which enables users to collaborate and share information on a Web server.

As the administrator of several Microsoft Web servers, I recently installed yet another Web server. But, after trying to upload a document to that Web server I received the following error message: "You are not authorized to view this page."

I conducted a Google search to find out solutions for this problem. Specifically, I entered the following search into the Google search engine:

"Microsoft SharePoint You are not authorized to view this page."

I found that Google listed 1-10 of about 4,010 articles revolving around the exact same issue. At this point I broke down and decided to resolve this problem and write this article.

I read the first few articles and followed their instructions. However, even though they all appeared quite logical, none of them solved my problem. I found that not one of them provided a correct solution to the problem that worked in my case. I gave up and proceeded to solve it by myself.

Following is the error message that Microsoft Web Server displayed it on the screen of the local host, the Web server machine:

"You do not have permission to view this page using your current user account."

Please try the following:

"If you have another user account with a higher level of permission, click your browser's Back button to try again using that account.

"If you believe you should be able to view this page, contact the Web site administrator.

http://localhost/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109

Error Cannot complete this action.

Please try again.

If this problem persists, please contact your administrator.

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint. (See Appendix A for actual output in HTML)

ANONYMOUS ACCESS

Anonymous access was checked marked. The following explanation appears at the dialogue box saying "No user name/password required to access this resource." But, this is not true! As the Administrator continues to read the dialog box, just in the next section, the following contradictory statement appears

"Authenticated access for the following authentication methods, user name and password are required when -anonymous access is disabled, or -access is restricted using NTFS access control list" (See Appendix 1: 1DefaultWebSitePropertiesDirectorySecurityAuthenticationMethos)

ANONYMOUS ACCESS IS DISABLED

Anonymous access has not been disabled, by me the administrator, nor has it been disabled by default. But due to this statement, one may be misled to go on a wild goose chase trying to figure out how else to enable the already-enabled Anonymous access (by checking the box in the Authentication Method dialogue box).

ACCESS IS RESTRICTED USING NTFS ACCESS CONTROL LIST

Access is not restricted using NTFS access control list. As the administrator, I went into the directory of the root of the Web server "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot." This misleads the administrator to think that enabling the permissions on the directory may allow access to the Web server, as I have done, to no avail

As we can see the Sharing Tab of the Workout Properties Check marks "Share This Folder On The Network And Allow Network Users To Change MyFiles." Yet the server still issues the infamous message as follows "You are not authorized to view this page"

SharingTabOfTheWWWRootPropertiesCheckMarks
ShareThisFolderOnTheNetworkAndAllowNetworkUsersTo
ChangeMyFiles).

I then thought that it may have to do with the "NTFS access control list," as opposed to "FAT32." (NTFS refers to New Technology File System versus its older counter part file structure, FAT32-File Allocation 32 bit, which is Microsoft's terminology for Hard Disk Drive file structures).

By this time, I had given up struggling to figure out what to do — I surfed the Internet a bit and decided to check with an older FAT32 server, in which I had already encountered and solved the same problem several years ago. In the meantime, I forgot how I resolved it before, and furthermore I thought that due to the more recent NTFS the old tricks of FAT32 may no longer apply. That was wrong! I went back to the old Web server machine, checking the properties of the same tab, finding some differences. The differences included the following additional 2 check marks that I noticed right away:

-Allow IIS to control password, and
-Integrated Windows authentication.

ALLOW IIS TO CONTROL PASSWORD

I had followed the practice of the running old FAT32 Windows XP Web server, and check marked the "[x] Allow IIS to control password." I thought that this would allow IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server Version 5 bundled with Windows XP Professional Operating System, bundled with the PC Hardware).

INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION

Much like the previous check mark, I followed the same procedure for the following option of "Integrated Windows authentication." I have also check-marked this option for the NTFS Web server. I hope that this will emulate the working FAT32 Web server, enabling me, the administrator, to avoid the annoying "You are not authorized to view this page" message. I was right, but then I remembered that I had done it already several times before, each time forgetting how I solved the problem the previous time.

SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

In summary, we have demonstrated how confusing security procedures can make users very unhappy. We also demonstrated how to solve the problem of dealing with some of the Microsoft issues regarding "INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION," "ALLOW IIS TO CONTROL PASSWORD," and "ANONYMOUS ACCESS." The implications are that some things do not change: Users still want a responsive system, and when problems occur, a responsive company corrects the problems, or at least explains how to correct the problems.

[NOTE: FOR THE APPENDICES OR FOR OTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHORS AT ARUSHINE@aol.com.]

References

1     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Distribution Processing: Implications and Applications for Business," JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, Vol. 35, No. 7, 21-27, July 1984.

2     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Word Processing Software on User Satisfaction: An Empirical Study of Micro, Mini and Mainframe Computers," OFFICE SYSTEMS RESEARCH JOURNAL, Vol. 3, No. 1, lead article 1-16, Fall 1984.

3     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Mini/Micro Computer Evaluation of System Features: An Empirical Discriminant Model of Software and Hardware Expandability, Compatibility, Cost/Efficiency, Installation and Delivery," MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Vol. 5, No. 3, 150-159, September 1984.

4     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Computer Assisted Manufacturing Software Related to User Satisfaction: An Interactive Knowledge Based System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails for Planning and Control," JOURNAL OF INFORMATION AND OPTIMIZATION SCIENCES, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1985.

5     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Health and Medical Software Related to Computer User Satisfaction: An Interactive Online Expert System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails Through Telecommunication Networks," HEALTH POLICY, Vol. 4, 199-219, 1985.

6     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Preliminary Studies On the Development of a Decision Support System for Evaluating Engineering and Scientific Software," ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING SOFTWARE, Vol. 7, No. 4, 173-178, 1985.

7     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "User Involvement in the Development and Use of Computer Based Systems for the Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Reducing Protocol Errors," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REHABILITATION RESEARCH, Vol. 8, No. 4, 443-454, 1985.

8     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Effect of System Ratings on User Satisfaction," INFORMATION AGE, Vol. 7, No. 2, 98-106, April 1985.

9     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Operating Systems, Compilers, Assemblers and Application Programs: Audit Trails of User Satisfaction," MICROPROCESSORS AND MICROSYSTEMS, Vol. 9, No. 5, 241-249, June 1985.

10     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Health Marketing and Sales Distribution Software Related to Computer User Satisfaction," HEALTH MARKETING QUARTERLY, Vol. 3, No. 1, 79-101, Fall 1985.

11     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Production and Inventory Management Software Packages Related to User Reactions," PRODUCTION AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT, Vol. 27, No. 1, 75-84, 1986.

12     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Communication Monitors on User Satisfaction," INFORMATION PROCESSING AND MANAGEMENT, Vol. 22, No. 4, 345-351, January 1986.

13     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Influence of Trouble-Shooting, Education and Documentation on Computer User Satisfaction," IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN AND CYBERNETICS, Vol. SMC-16, No. 1, 165-167, January/February 1986.

14     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy," COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY (ACM), Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598, July 1986.

15     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "The Effects of Computer Location on End-user Satisfaction," INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT AND DATA SYSTEMS, 3-7, November-December 1986.

16     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "An Application Model for Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing Using a Product Evaluation and Selection System," COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, Vol.12, No. 3, 173-180, 1987.

17     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "CAD-CAM (Computer Assisted Design- Computer Assisted Manufacturing) Electronic Design Case Study: A Needs Assessment for Microcomputer Users, Vendors and Consultants," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vol. 3, No. 3, 299-306, 1987.

18     Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "Education, Scheduling and Administration Related to Computer User Satisfaction: An Interactive On-line Expert System Using Diagnostic Audit Trails Through Telecommunication Networks," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vol. 3, No. 4, 399-412, 1987.

19     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Business Graphic Packages," JOURNAL OF SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT, Volume 39, No. 3, 12-21, March 1988.

20     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Graphics Board (GB) Case Study: Feature Selection System for Microcomputer users and Manufacturers" INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MICROGRAPHICS & VIDEO TECHNOLOGY, 1988.

21     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "A Feature Selection System for Multiuser Databases," OMEGA: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, Volume 17, No. 1, January 1989.

22     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Accelerator Boards, Memory, Power, Coprocessor, and Price in an Automated and Networked Matching Algorithm of Users' Needs", COMPUTERS & ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, Vol. 15, No.3/4, 131-142, 1989.

23     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Training Software Case Study: A Product Evaluation and Selection System", JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 1989.

24     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Matching Program Code Generators to Software Developers' Needs", OMEGA: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1990.

25     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Terminal Emulation Controllers, Duplex, Communication Protocols, Multisession Networks, Copy Protection, Baud-Rate, and Windows Compatibility: Profit Measures and Product Features", TELEMATICS AND INFORMATICS, Pergammon Press, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1993, 59-73.

26     Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Project Management Software Feature Profitability: Windows, Networks, Mainframes, Filtered Task Diagrams, Schedules, and Calendars, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS (JCIS), Vol. 37, No. 4, Summer 1997, 48-55.

The authors are professors at the University of Miami and board members of The Institute of Internal Auditors. They will provide additional information on this topic upon written request. Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e-commerce security and controls; HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability), Sarbanes-Oxley & Basel II Compliance Forensic Accounting, Web marketing ROI, e-learning, and Internet domain copyright, trademarks and patents ROI. Sara Rushinek's research interests include business intelligence and data mining for decision-making, electronic stock trading; and e-commerce security of enterprise resource management.



Source: Ubiquity Volume 6, Issue 2 (January 25 - February 1, 2005)

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Auteur(s) / Author(s)

RUSHINEK S. F. ⁽¹⁾ ; RUSHINEK A. ;

Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)

⁽¹⁾ Univ. Miami, dep. management sci. accounting, Coral fables FL 33124, ETATS-UNIS

Résumé / Abstract

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JSTOR and University of California Press Announce Current Scholarship Program

·         Mini/Micro Computer Evaluation of System Features: An Empirical Discriminant Model of Software and Hardware Expandability, Compatibility, Cost-Efficiency, Installation and Delivery

·         Avi Rushinek and Sara F. Rushinek

·         Managerial and Decision Economics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 150-159
(article consists of 10 pages)

·         Published by: John Wiley & Sons

·         Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2487540

Abstract

The rapid advances in technology with declining costs of hardware is expected to widen the market for computers. One of the interesting balances for vendors to achieve is keeping users happy with increases in price performance, usually with lower unit costs. One way to achieve this objective is by satisfying users and meeting their needs. Users have many different needs, however, and it may be very difficult to prioritize them since many of the needs are partially mutually exclusive. For example, the promotion of one need, low response time, would be at the expense of another need, low cost. Therefore, mini/micro vendors and users could use a model that will prioritize needs and measure how satisfied users are with specific computer systems as compared to others. Similarly, the same information may be very useful to current and future computer users for system selection. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present study is to provide vendors and users of mini/micro computers with a discriminant model. This model classifies correctly 93% of the successful systems. Thus it can be used for system selection by users and for system design by vendors.

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Matching program code generators to software developers' needs

Author info | Abstract | Publisher info | Download info | Related research | Statistics

Rushinek, A
Rushinek, S

The overall productivity derived from a system depends on matching system specifications to user needs. This case illustrates the selection of microcomputer based software for Program Code Generators (PG). A recommendation report ranks the PG in descending order of their correlations to user needs. Implications for users, consultants and vendors are discussed and illustrated.

To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

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What Makes a Publisher Important?
By Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

Maximization of Internet Citations Methodology

What makes a computer journal important? To answer this question, we suggest an approach based on a forensic expert witness testimony and computer litigation support -- an approach that uses the relative number of citations of a search engine as the evaluation criteria.

This standpoint may be relevant for authors deciding which publisher they should submit their articles to first, especially if they are seeking tenure at an academic institution. It may be especially relevant for authors who are also expert witnesses or are interested in becoming expert witnesses. Likewise, it may be relevant for lawyers, judges and mediators who have to select expert witnesses, and are not familiar with the domain of expertise. How can outsiders evaluate quickly, effectively and objectively the quality of the authors, articles and the publishers of the expert's journals? This will help evaluate the expert's legal credibility.

This study uses Internet search engines and the relative number of citations as a measure of quality, applying it to Journal X and Journal Y. It concludes that Journal X is the more important journal based on this approach, as it will be typically done in a court of law. This study rejects the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference among the number of citations of search engines among different journals, using the same authors, the same number of authors, and the same year of publications.

Additional details, programs and illustrations have been omitted to save space and will be provided from the authors upon written request.


Introduction

Evaluating the quality of a journal publisher is many times a controversial issue. This is especially the case as it pertains to the promotion and tenure decisions of faculty members. For that reason, many academic articles have been written about this subject. Yet, these articles may not address some issues when applied to environments outside the academic community. One such example is from the perspective of a forensic expert witness testimony. In such an environment, the traditional academic approach may not be the best and only approach. It may be too theoretical or too esoteric. It may take too much time to conduct these academic studies, leading to out-of-date results. What can be done to supplement the traditional academic methods of comparing the quality of different journal publishers, authors and articles, especially for lay people who do not know the domain, cannot invest a lot of time in studying it, and need to get objective, immediate and up-to-date answers? Our response is using the Internet search engines to compare articles.

Such approaches may supplement the traditional methods published by academic researchers. Users of such methods could be the courts, lawyers, jurors, mediators and editors who must evaluate journal publishers without much background in the expertise of journalism or similar fields. Most professional editors are experts in their domains, such as business, engineering, medicine, with very little background in journalism.


Researchers Rank & Rate Journal Publishers for Academic Promotions

The page at http://www.isworld.org/csaunders/rankings.htm reports that "The purpose of this page is to provide information about evaluations concerning the quality of MIS, POM and management journals. These evaluations may prove helpful to you in preparing promotion and/or tenure packets. In addition to the standard question of how many, there, hopefully is some concern at your university about how good your publications are. Since professionals in disciplines other than yours evaluate tenure and promotion, the rankings of journals in your discipline often serve as surrogate measures of quality. If you have published in top-ranked journals, be sure to highlight the ranking of those journals in your promotion and tenure packets."


Researchers Rank and Rate Journal Y Better Than Journal X

Are researcher rankings and ratings always applicable to non-researcher audiences? Our answer is no. Our reason is that one method of evaluation does not always apply everywhere. Alternatively, one size does not fit all. Or, different strokes apply for different folks. How is a forensic expert witness testimony and computer litigation support approach different? Because it does not deal with researchers; it deals with juries, judges, lawyers, and experts.


Different Evaluation Methods for Different Applications

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. developed "An Application Model for Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing Using a Product Evaluation and Selection System," for Computers & Industrial Engineering, (1987). Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. use the same word "evaluation" yet the "Control Through Standard Costs and Variance Analysis for Performance Evaluation," for Economic Planning (1990), is a different method and approach due to the differences in the environment of the application. The same phenomena becomes apparent as we look at another Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. evaluation approach in the "Accounting Software Evaluation: Hardware, Audit Trails, Backup, Error Recovery and Security," published in the Managerial Auditing Journal, (1995). Again, we see a completely different approach to the process of evaluation, due to different circumstances.


Search Engines and the World Wide Web: Comparing Journal Publisher Quality of Opposing Expert Witnesses

Similarly, the way to evaluate journal publishers for a forensic expert witness testimony and computer litigation support approach should be based on a simple test that any juror, lawyer or judge could perform within five seconds at any place, at any time, with the use of a browser and the World Wide Web. The present study takes this approach. In a typical computer-related litigation of a computer vendor and a computer user; the computer user, usually the plaintiff, claims to be unhappy with defendant's (the vendor) service or product. The plaintiff usually demands a refund plus damages, and the defendant refuses to satisfy the user's demands. The court (lawyer and judges) invites experts on both sides to testify on behalf of the plaintiff and defendant. Eventually, the opposing experts will disagree, and it will become a matter of credibility of the experts. So, the question is which expert is more credible?

One of the ways that experts can establish their credibility is by their publication record. At this point, it becomes a contest of which expert's articles are better, and which method will be most effective at convincing the court? Would it be the consensus of researchers or is there a simpler and better way to impress the court. Our answer is yes, there is definitely a better way to impress the court other then confusing them with theoretical academic arguments. There is a reason for the saying "this is just an academic exercise" implying that it is not a practical exercise. For the court, we definitely want to use a practical approach. Such an approach to evaluate an article is to use the common search engine and comparing the number of citations on the WWW. By simply searching the author's name and the title of articles of the opposing experts, the court can quickly and objectively evaluate the most recent relative quality of the journal articles and publishers of the opposing experts.


A Typical Case: Plaintiff Wants His Money Back and Defendant Refuses To Pay Back

In a typical case the plaintiff has agreed to pay $500,000 for a package of hardware and software, with an advance of $250,000 during the delivery and testing phase, and the remainder due three months later. When the package was delivered, the plaintiff had 30 days to test the package, and accept or reject it with full refund if it is rejected. At the 30th day the plaintiff rejected the package due to the fact that the query of a database over the WWW, using a browser as a client, boosts the response time from 5 seconds, on a client server network, to 25 minutes on the WWW. The defendant claimed initially that this is a minor problem and could be fixed within a few minutes. The minutes turn to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, and months turned to years. Four months later, the plaintiff wants his advanced $250,000 back. In contrast, the defendant refuses to payback claiming the 30 days have expired and demands the rest of the $250,000 due for the package.

The plaintiffs' expert witnesses use the ACM-published article Rushinek & Rushinek, "What Makes Users Happy" (1986) paper to support their case. They claim that the response time is crucial and the plaintiffs demanded their money back within the 30th day. The defending expert witness team uses a similar article from Journal Y, claiming that Journal Y is more credible, since it has higher ranking among academic researchers. The plaintiff claims that the higher academic ranking of Journal Y may be relevant to academic tenure decisions, but the search engine citation test is much more relevant to a court case.

The purpose of this study is to show that the search engine citation test is a very useful supplement to the tradition academic ranking of journals. In some cases, such as this, it may be even superior for litigation support,.

WWW Search Engine Takes Less Than 30 Seconds To Score Authors, Articles and Journal Publishers

Appendix A shows the results of searching http://www.google.com for: Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy." The search took approximately 0.23 seconds to complete and resulted in 45 citations, the first 10 of which are shown in Appendix A. The court can easily carry out this method of evaluation during a trial. All parties can understand and agree that it is an objective method. The higher the frequency of citations, the better the quality of the article and its related publisher. Using this method we took a sample of articles that we published during the year of 1986 and searched them in Google. We have also added a pair of other authors' works, since they have also published with Journal X and Journal Y. This removed the confounding variable of the relatively low ranking of some of the articles by academic MIS researchers.

Journal X Publisher Scores At least 10 Time More Citations Compared to the Next Best Journal Publisher

Our results show the citations of Journal X compared to other publishers for Rushinek & Rushinek (1986) and two other authors. For all authors and all journal publishers Journal X has a superior citation record by a factor of magnitude of at least 1 to 10. That means that for each citation of any other journal publisher (for the same authors, same number of authors (2), and same year) Journal X got at least 10 times the number of citations. This is especially surprising about Journal Y since academic researchers have consistently ranked it statistically significantly better than Journal X. We have repeated this test with several other authors and journal publishers and found the same pattern; therefore, we conclude that this is a pattern rather than an anomaly.


Summary, Conclusions and Implications

In summary, we have reviewed the literature of the traditional MIS evaluation articles of Journal Y. We have explained why such methods may not be completely appropriate for some circumstances. In such circumstances, we have demonstrated that less traditional methods of evaluation can have some advantages over the more traditional methods. Likewise, such methods can produce results that contradict the traditional methods and sometimes can be more relevant and more applicable.

This study shows a typical court case study and how the search engine citation journal evaluation method could be used in a court of law to supplement and even contrast the traditional academic ranking of journals. It demonstrates how sometimes "quick and dirty" evaluation methods may be faster, simpler, more practical, recent, objective, easily reproducible and most importantly more easily understandable to lay people who have no formal journalism education or the domain expertise.

Our conclusion is that for the purpose of forensic MIS expert witnesses, Journal X is a superior journal publisher as compared to the Journal Y. Therefore, we would expect to find more use for it in a court of law. However, this is beyond the scope of the current study, and may be reserved for future research. We have tested and rejected the null hypothesis that the differences in the number of search engine citations between Journal X and other journal publishers is statistically insignificant, in favor of the alternate hypothesis. The alternate hypothesis states that there are statistically significant differences in these citations.

Our implications are that in the future more studies should be done in the area of forensic computing and litigation support. In such studies, new measures of quality and performance of journal publishers, authors and their articles will emerge. Such studies will be more cross-disciplinary because they will involve a larger variety of professionals and non-professional participants.


References

http://catt.bus.okstate.edu/isworld/journal2.htm

Nikos Mylonopoulos and V. Theoharakis, "On-Site: Global Perceptions of IS Journals," Communications of the ACM, Sept. 2001, vol. 44, no. 9, 29-33

Michael Whitman, Anthony Hendrickson and Anthony Townsend "Research Commentary. Academic Rewards for Teaching, Research and service: Data and Discourse," Information Systems Research, June 1999, vol. 10, no. 2, 99-109

Bill Hardgrave and Kent Walstrom "Forums for MIS Scholars," Communications of the ACM, November 1997, vol. 40, no.11, 119-124

Kent Walstrom, Bill Hardgrave and Rick Wilson "Forums for Management Information Systems Scholars," Communications of the ACM, 1995, vol. 38, no.3, 93-102

Clyde Holsapple, Linda Johnson, Herman Manakyan, and John Tanner "Business Computing Research Journals: A Normalized Citation Analysis, " Journal of Management Information Systems, 1994, vol. 11, no. 1, 131-140

Mark Gillenson and Joel Stutz "Academic Issues in MIS: Journals and Books," MIS Quarterly, 1991, vol.15, no.4, 147-452

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy," Communications of the ACM, July 1986, Vol. 29, No. 7, 594-598.

Rushinek, S. and Rushinek, A. "An Application Model for Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing Using a Product Evaluation and Selection System," Computers & Industrial Engineering, 1987, Vol. 12, No. 3, 173-180.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Control Through Standard Costs and Variance Analysis for Performance Evaluation," Economic Planning, April, 1990, Vol. 26, No. 2, 3-8.

Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "Accounting Software Evaluation: Hardware, Audit Trails, Backup, Error Recovery and Security," 1995, Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 10, No. 9.


Appendix A:

Searching http://www.google.com for: Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy,"

Citation ... Communications of the ACM >archive Volume 29 , Issue 7 (July 1986) >toc What makes users happy? Authors Avi Rushinek Univ. ... 9-20. 12 A Rushinek , S ... portal.acm.org/ citation.cfm?id=6140&dl=ACM&coll=portal&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618 - Similar pages

TOC... What makes users happy? Avi Rushinek, Sara F. Rushinek Pages: 594 - 598 > full text, Pygmalion ... Geoffry S. Howard, Robert D. Smith Pages: 611 - 615 > full text, ... portal.acm.org/ toc.cfm?id=6138&type=issue&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=618461 - Similar pages [ More results from portal.acm.org ]

Designing Responsive Software ... 56-71. Rushinek, A. and Rushinek, S. "What Makes Users Happy?", Communications of the ACM, 1986, 29, pages 584-598. Shneiderman, B ... hci.stanford.edu/cs547/links/johnson.html - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

Reviewer Application You selected to review: Bibliographic Reference #: 6140. "What makes users happy?" Rushinek A., Rushinek S. Communications of the ACM 29: 594-598, 1986. ... www.reviews.com/reviewer/quickreview/ Frame_body.cfm?bib_id=6140 - 10k - Cached - Similar pages

CACM, Volume 29, 198 ... 593; Avi Rushinek, Sara F. Rushinek: What Makes Users Happy? ... 605-610; Geoffry S. Howard, Robert D. Smith: Computer Anxiety in Management: Myth or Reality? ..www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/ db/journals/cacm/cacm29.html - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

[PDF]Wanted: Programming Support for Ensuring Responsiveness Despite ... File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML ... 1969. [Rus86] A. Rushinek and SF Rushinek. What makes users happy? ... 1991. [Zha93] L. Zhang, S. Deering, D. Estrin, S. Shenker and D. Zappala. ... www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/98/HPL-98-15.pdf - Similar pages

User's assessment of the Marketing Information Systems ... RUSHINEK, Avi & RUSHINEK, Sara F. What Makes Users Happy ?. ... 701p. VARNEY, S. IS takes charge of customer service, Datamation, 46-51, August 1996. ... www.lrv.eps.ufsc.br/IFIP-WG-9.5/Ifip-cd/ifip/1b3.html - 25k - Cached

[PS]www.dstc.edu.au/RDU/publications/ps_reports/trader-ui.ps File Format: Adobe PostScript - View as Text ... JASIS, 27(5):268- 272, September 1977. [11] A. Rushinek and S. Rushinek. What makes users happy? Communications to the. ACM, 29(7):594-598, 1986. ... Similar pages

[PDF]An evaluation scheme for trader user interfaces 1 INTRODUCTION File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML ... JASIS , 27(5):268-272, September 1977. 13 Page 14. [11] A. Rushinek and S. Rushinek. What makes users happy? Communications to the ACM , 29(7):594-598, 1986. ... staff.dstc.edu.au/andrewg/papers/icodp95/paper.pdf - Similar pages

Citation ... 3 Chin, JP, Norman, KL, & Shneiderman, 13. Subjective user evaluation of CF PASCAL programming tools. ... 9 Avi Rushinek , Sara F. Rushinek, What makes ... www.acm.org/pubs/citations/proceedings/ chi/57167/p213-chin/ - 35k - Cached


Ubiquity, Volume 4, Issue 12, May 13 - 19, 2003


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The authors are professors at the University of Miami. They will provide additional appendices, tables, charts and program code listings upon written request. Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research interests include e-commerce security and controls, Web marketing ROI, e-learning, and Internet domain copyright, trademarks and patents ROI. Sara Rushinek's research interests include computer applications for decision-making, electronic stock trading; and Internet and e-commerce security of enterprise resource management.

A Rushinek, S Rushinek - Ubiquity, 2003 - portal.acm.org
... in the area of forensic computing and ... Avi Rushinek's (arush@miami.edu) research
interests include e ... everyone interested in the future of information technology. ...
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Forecasting sales, expenses and stock market values by quarterly financial statement ratio …

Title:

Forecasting sales, expenses and stock market values by quarterly financial statement ratio analysis: a microcomputer software development model

Author(s):

Avi Rushinek, Sara F. Rushinek

Journal:

Managerial Auditing Journal

Year:

1995

Volume:

10

Issue:

2

Page:

7 - 33

ISSN:

0268-6902

DOI:

10.1108/02686909510079620

Publisher:

MCB UP Ltd

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Abstract:

Presents a case study demonstrating financial statement ratio analysis (FSRA). This analysis matches company to industry data and builds sales forecasting models. FSRA imputes forecast standards of sales and costs, and applies them to a budgeted financial statement variance analysis for the EE (electronic and electrical) industry. Develops the concept of industry base standards, integrating them into the more traditional statistical and accounting concepts of quality control standards. Provides an implementation example, and reviews possible improvements to the current methodology and approach. Uses a similar methodology to forecast the stock market value with some exceptions. Models sales and costs of an individual company and an industry based largely on aggregate industry databases. For this purpose, uses a multivariate linear trend regression analysis for the sales forecasting model. Defines and tests related hypotheses and evaluates their significance and confidence levels. For an illustration uses the EE industry and the APM company. Also demonstrates a microcomputer-based FSRA software that speeds, facilitates, and helps to accomplish the stated objectives. The FSRA software uses industry financial statement databases, computes financial ratios and builds forecasting models.

Keywords:

Budgeting, Financial statements, Models, Ratios, Sales forecasting, Statistics

Article Type:

Case study

Article URL:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/02686909510079620

A Rushinek, SF Rushinek - Managerial Auditing Journal, 1995 - emeraldinsight.com
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