In recent years, IS researchers have become increasingly interested in service quality of information system functions. However, one area that receives little attention is the service quality of the information system development process. The current study attempts to fill this gap by developing an instrument to measure the system development service quality (ISDEV-SERVPERF) and to test the validity of the newly developed instrument by placing it into a nomological network developed based on the DeLone and McLean's [13] model of IS success. Through mail survey, data were collected from 168 users of information systems who have been involved in system development. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural path analysis using LISREL were performed to analyze the data collected. ISDEV-SERVPERF is found to be a valid and the reliable measure of system development service quality. A second-order factor structure with the system development service quality as the second-order factor and reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy as first-order factors is found to provide a good fit to the data. The system development service quality has also been found to have significant positive effects on various measures of IS success. By conceptualizing system development as a service delivery process, it provides a new theoretical perspective in studying the impacts of system development process. Moreover, the newly developed measurement scales, ISDEV-SERVPERF, can be used in future study of service quality of system development or as a diagnostic device for practical purpose.
The shift from goods-based economy to a service-based economy in a macro level [44] and the growing significance of the service components of information system functions in particular [20] have been recognized by IS researchers. In recent years, IS researchers have become increasingly interested in service quality of information system functions. There is large body of literature on this topic that has been published. Some of them examine the conceptual and measurement aspects of IS service quality [23,24,42,50,51,53], while other investigate the importance of service quality of the information system functions to an organization.
[...] J.-H.Wu and Y.-M.Wang, Measuring KMS success: A respecification of the DeLone and McLean's model, Information & Management 43 (2006) Appendix A Scales and Items All items were measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree except the User Satisfaction items, which were measure on a 7-point scale from very dissatisfied to very satisfied System Development Service Quality Assurance ASSU1: The behavior of IT staff provided confidence to the users in the development process. ASSU2: IT staff were consistently courteous with users in the development process. [...]
[...] Therefore, the resultant measurement of system development service quality, which will be called ISDEV-SERVPERF, contains 19 items covering the five dimensions of responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy and tangibles. The wordings of the 19 items was slightly modified to fit the context of IS development. For example, the statement of “when XYZ promises to do something by a certain time, it does in the original SERVQUAL was modified to “when IT/IS staff promised to do something in the system development process within a certain time, they did Performance-only rating of service was used in the current study in order to avoid the psychometric problem of the score. [...]
[...] Because the objective of our study is to see the impacts of services quality of IS system development on various other variables and the performance-only method of measurement of service quality possesses better psychometric properties, the performance-only measure was used in the current study Research Model In order to test the validity and the impact of systems development service quality, we place the new construct into a nomological network based on the IS success model proposed by DeLone and McLean [12,13] and Seddon's re-specification of the D&M's model. [...]
[...] We would argue that a major portion of the system development process is actually services provided by the system developers and process possesses the essential characteristics of service - intangibility, heterogeneity, and inseparability [4,32,49]. As such, service quality provides a useful theoretical lens to understand what can be done to improve the process. Although researchers have investigated the impacts of different aspects of the system development process, such as user involvement and participation user-developer communication [18,35] and developer's responsiveness on the success of information systems, using service quality concept allows us to more holistic understanding of the quality of system development process. [...]
[...] The measurement scale ISDEV-SERVPERF, which is adapted from SERVPERF, is found useful and suitable to measure system development service quality. The results show that ISDEV-SERVPERF demonstrates high construct reliability, and good convergent and discriminant validity. The results also show that four dimensions of the scale are applicable in the system development area. They are reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. However, the dimension of tangibles is problematic. Several studies of SERVQUAL also found that the dimension of tangibles exhibits problems [10,22,34,38,41]. [...]
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