Introduction to Information Technology

Efraim Turban is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Pacific Institute for Information Systems Management College of Business University of Hawaii at Manoa. He obtained his MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. His industry experience includes eight years as an industrial engineer, three of which were spent at General Electric Transformers Plant. He also has extensive consulting experience to small and large corporations as well as to foreign governments. In his 30 years of teaching, Dr. Turban has served as Distinguished Professor at Eastern Illinois University, and as Visiting Professor at UCLA, City University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and University of Miami. He also taught at UCLA, USC, Simon Fraser University, and California State University, Long Beach and has held permanent positions with Lehigh University, Simon Fraser University, and Florida International University. Dr. Turban was a co--recipient of the 1984/85 National Management Science Award (Artificial Intelligence in Management). In 1997 he received the Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievement Award at California State University, Long Beach. He was the co--chair of the 1999 International Conference of Electronic Commerce. Dr. Turban has published over 100 articles in leading journals. He has also published 21 books, including Electronic Commerce 2004: A Managerial Perspective. R. Kelly Rainer, Jr. is George Phillips Privett Professor of Management Information Systems at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama. He received his BS degree in Mathematics from Auburn and his Doctor of Dental Medicine for ten years, Professor Rainer returned to school and received his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia. He has published numerous articles in leading journals. His current research interests include health care informatics and information technology security. Richard E. Potter is Assistant Professor of Information and Decision Sciences in the College of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received a bachelors degree in psychology from California State University--Hayward, and an MS in Management degree and Ph.D. degree in Management and Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona. Dr. Potter was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health and Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor of MIS at the University of Arizona's Keller School of Management. He also served Mexico's ITESM system as Director of Research and Doctoral Programs at their Mexico City Graduate School of Business. Dr. Potter's current research interest is cognition and behavior in the electronics environment, with emphasis on performance assessment and intervention with electronically supported groups, and cultural effects on collaborative technology use. He has published in a number of leading scientific journals, has authored numerous book chapters, and has presented his work in academic conferences around the world.