• Title/Summary/Keyword: Explicit context

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An Empirical Study on the Importance of Psychological Contract Commitment in Information Systems Outsourcing (정보시스템 아웃소싱에서 심리적 계약 커미트먼트의 중요성에 대한 연구)

  • Kim, Hyung-Jin;Lee, Sang-Hoon;Lee, Ho-Geun
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.49-81
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    • 2007
  • Research in the IS (Information Systems) outsourcing has focused on the importance of legal contracts and partnerships between vendors and clients. Without detailed legal contracts, there is no guarantee that an outsourcing vendor would not indulge in self-serving behavior. In addition, partnerships can supplement legal contracts in managing the relationship between clients and vendors legal contracts by itself cannot deal with all the complexity and ambiguity involved with IS outsourcing relationships. In this paper, we introduce a psychological contract (between client and vendor) as an important variable for IS outsourcing success. A psychological contract refers to individual's mental beliefs about his or her mutual obligations in a contractual relationship (Rousseau, 1995). A psychological contract emerges when one party believes that a promise of future returns has been made, a contribution has been given, and thus, an obligation has been created to provide future benefits (Rousseau, 1989). An employmentpsychological contract, which is a widespread concept in psychology, refers to employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship, i.e. mutual obligations, values, expectations and aspirations that operate over and above the formal contract of employment (Smithson and Lewis, 2003). Similar to the psychological contract between an employer and employee, IS outsourcing involves a contract and a set of mutual obligations between client and vendor (Ho et al., 2003). Given the lack of prior research on psychological contracts in the IS outsourcing context, we extend such studies and give insights through investigating the role of psychological contracts between client and vendor. Psychological contract theory offers highly relevant and sound theoretical lens for studying IS outsourcing management because of its six distinctive principles: (1) it focuses on mutual (rather than one-sided) obligations between contractual parties, (2) it's more comprehensive than the concept of legal contract, (3) it's an individual-level construct, (4) it changes over time, (5) it affects organizational behaviors, and (6) it's susceptible to organizational factors (Koh et al., 2004; Rousseau, 1996; Coyle-Shapiro, 2000). The aim of this paper is to put the concept, psychological contract commitment (PCC), under the spotlight, by finding out its mediating effects between legal contracts/partnerships and IS outsourcing success. Our interest is in the psychological contract commitment (PCC) or commitment to psychological contracts, which is the extent to which a partner consistently and deeply concerns with what the counter-party believes as obligations during the IS project. The basic premise for the hypothesized relationship between PCC and success is that for outsourcing success, client and vendor should continually commit to mutual obligations in which both parties believe, rather than to only explicit obligations. The psychological contract commitment playsa pivotal role in evaluating a counter-party because it reflects what one party really expects from the other. If one party consistently shows high commitment to psychological contracts, the other party would evaluate it positively. This will increase positive reciprocation efforts of the other party, thus leading to successful outsourcing outcomes (McNeeley and Meglino, 1994). We have used matched sample data for this research. We have collected three responses from each set of a client and a vendor firm: a project manager of the client firm, a project member from the vendor firm with whom the project manager cooperated, and an end-user of the client company who actually used the outsourced information systems. Special caution was given to the data collection process to avoid any bias in responses. We first sent three types of questionnaires (A, Band C) to each project manager of the client firm, asking him/her to answer the first type of questionnaires (A).

International Research Trends Related to Inquiry in Science Education: Perception and Perspective on Inquiry, Support and Strategy for Inquiry, and Teacher Professional Development for Inquiry (과학교육에서 탐구 관련 국외 연구 동향 -탐구의 인식과 관점, 전략과 지원, 교사 전문성의 관점에서-)

  • Yu, Eun-Jeong;Byun, Taejin;Baek, Jongho;Shim, Hyeon-Pyo;Ryu, Kumbok;Lee, Dongwon
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.41 no.1
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    • pp.33-46
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    • 2021
  • Inquiry occupies an important place in science education, and research related to inquiry is widely conducted. However, due to the inclusiveness of the concept of "exploration," each researcher perceives its meaning differently, and approaches may vary. In addition, criticisms have been raised that the results of classes using inquiry in science education do not guarantee meaningful changes to students. Therefore, this study attempts to identify the trend of SSCI-level research papers dealing with inquiry in science education over the past three years to confirm the current status and effectiveness of the inquiry. Researches used in the analysis are International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Research in Science Education, and Science Education, and limited to those that directly suggest "inquiry (enquiry)" as a keyword. Based on extracted 75 papers, the classification process was conducted, and an analysis frame was derived inductively by reflecting the subject and characteristics. Specific cases for each category were presented by dividing into three aspects: perception and perspective on inquiry, support and strategy for inquiry, and teacher professional development for inquiry. The results of examining the implications for scientific inquiry are as follows: First, rather than defining inquiry as an implicit proposition or presenting it as a step-by-step procedure, it was induced to grasp the meaning of inquiry more comprehensively and holistically. Second, as to whether the inquiry-based instruction is effective in all aspects of the cognitive, functional, and affective domains of science, the limitations are clearly presented, and the context-dependent and subject-specific properties and limitations of inquiry are emphasized. Third, uncertainty in science inquiry-based instruction can help learners to begin their inquiry and develop interest, but in the process of recognizing data and restructuring knowledge, explicit and specific guidance and scaffolding should be provided at an appropriate timing.