A survey for measuring and managing employee dependability with EBusiness

Abstract

E-business' influences in creating transactional efficiencies, facilitating innovations, and making faster diffusion of codified knowledge seem to be revolutionary for employees. Unfortunately, no published survey focuses exclusively on examining employees' perception of dependability with e-business (EDEB). This paper presents such an instrument and reports on a pilot study based on a survey of 152 employees practicing in six international semiconductor manufacturing companies in the Hsin-Chu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan. After a deep exploration for the conceptualization and operationalization of employees' perception of dependability with e-business construct, procedures used in generating and purifying the employee dependability with e-business (i.e., EDEB) scale are described. The results suggest a 22-item instrument that measures six dimensions of employee dependability with e-business - information quality, system quality, usefulness, ease of use, reliability, and assurance. Evidence of the instrument's factor structure, reliability, and validity are examined next. Finally, this paper concludes a discussion of potential applications of this instrument for achieving more precision in e-business success.