This paper investigates a model building problem of a system development methodology for problem solving based on systems theory. The methodology can be considered a general one in the sense that in principle it can address any kind of problems and that it has handled EUD type problems successfully.

The paper first explains the methodology and its problem classification scheme for its application in order to clarify the objective and background of this paper. The methodology requires a problem to be formalized as a model called a user model. According to the classification, one class of problems has an operational procedure to derive a user model for a given problem. However, the other class does not have an operational way to derive a user model. The paper introduces two concepts, goal order and completeness order for the target class and presents an operational method of user model building for it. Finally, the paper demonstrates how the method can be applied using four examples that represent the entire subclasses of the target class.

Organizational IQ (OrglQ) is a quantitative measure to evaluate the efficiency of organizational functions and effectiveness of knowledge creation in a company. OrglQ treats organizations as large information processing systems. The OrglQ model hypothesizes that organization efficiency and effective knowledge creation is a function of the following five factors: External Information Awareness (EIA), Internal Knowledge Dissemination (IKD), Effective Decision-making Architecture (EDA), Organizat沁nal Focus (OF), and Continuous Innovation (CI). We tested this hypothesis using co-variance structured analysis results of a survey of fourteen high-technology companies (17 business units) conducted in the year 2000 by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Our findings show two causal models to be significant. In addition, we found that (1) the five OrglQ variables could directly be derived from survey data, and (2) there was a clear causal relationship between information-oriented factors and resource-oriented factors. Specifically, the improvement in E1A and IKD tend to contribute to better resource utilization. Also, resource-oriented factors tend to play an important role for more effective decision making.

Researches on online businesses have dramatically increased, as this line of business has expanded rapidly. However, there are few studies that analyze the success factors of specific industries or specific businesses quantitatively. Therefore, this analysis focuses on the stock trading industry which largely shifted from a "brick-and-mortar" market to an online market earlier than many other rapidly growing online businesses. The present study quantitatively investigates the factors that affect the performance of companies in this industry. The results are that (1) a first-mover advantage does exist, and (2) since the core customers are limited, performance is not improved only by increasing the number of accounts (i.e,, there are “diseconomies of scale.”)

With improvement of system in Information Technology (IT), quality and quantity of the information that companies are receiving has changed broadly. However, there are many organizations that have not gained desirable outcomes from the system. The key factor (to use the system better) is how the organization alters the information into the value. In this research, the process of Information Application is focused on, which consists of three phases: Information Collection, Classification and Interpretation.

The results from this research are:1) There are a co-relation between the numbers of accesses to the corporate websites that is one of main IT system and the outcomes from it. The process of the Information Application in organization was influencing on the co-relation as a parameter. In other words, active Information Application in the whole process strengthens the desirable relationship between the numbers of access and the outcomes from the IT system. 2) However, there are some results that were not following the general theory. First, even though Information Application was passive in the first half it makes desirable outcomes by combined with active Information Application in the last half Second, ’’Information Sharing among outside organizations" is not always effective on producing outcomes because it depends on the contents of the outcomes. Therefore, to argue the combination between the policies in each three phases of Information Application and desirable outcome from the system should be needed.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the mechanism of how IT creates business value, particularly from the viewpoint of IT management effectiveness. To do this, we developed a hypothetical structural model that consists of six performance indicators, such as awareness and actions of top management, linkage between management and IT, IT development capability, IT investment and deployment, IT readiness, and business value creation from IT. Based on the analyses of data collected from five hundred and nine major companies comprising various types of businesses in Japan, we found that awareness and actions of top management lead to business value creation from IT via other interim factors, e.g., linkage between management and IT. Also, we found that the causal structure of IT management effectiveness remains largely stable regardless of scales and types of business of the companies.