Managing Internet and Intranet Technologies in Organizations: Challenges & Opportunities

This book consists of 12 papers by different authors on a range of issues that organizations need to consider when implementing intranet and Internet technologies. In the introduction Dasgupta explains that the papers are grouped under three broad headings: intra‐organizational uses (four papers, including one on service quality of extranets), inter‐organizational uses (five papers), and technical issues (three papers). However, I see a different grouping: four papers focus on different aspects of e‐commerce, two on Web‐based instruction and learning, and two on implementation issues, with the others covering service quality of extranets; security; performance and reliability; and using Web logs as market research data warehouses. The authors take a variety of approaches – some use case studies, others survey the literature or give an overview of the topic, two present models or theories, and one is based on a survey. Eight of the papers were written by authors based in the USA (but representing only three universities); other authors are from New Zealand, Australia and the UK, Sweden, and The Netherlands. As a whole, the book is disappointing – each paper has been written to stand alone, and there are no connections made between related papers. It is also not clear who the intended audience is, with some papers written in an academic style, such as Yetkiner and Horváth’s “Macroeconomic implications of virtual shopping: a theoretical approach”, while others take a more introductory approach to their topic, with one, Lumley’s “Managing Web site performance and reliability”, defining the term “URL” and explaining how these are mapped to an IP address. Though Dasgupta acknowledges the contribution of reviewers (some of whom have also written papers in the book) and implies that many more papers were submitted than published, he does not say how the final 12 were chosen, nor does he identify the book’s overall objective. There are noticeable inconsistencies between the papers, such as the inclusion of an abstract or summary (only seven of 12 have one) and the length of the bibliography (ranging from a mere four to over 50 citations). Nonetheless, some of the individual papers are very useful, particularly Panko’s introduction to security and Hope’s overview of service quality in the virtual world. Because of the emphasis on electronic commerce, the book is unlikely to be particularly useful to library IT specialists and Web managers, who are likely to find titles like Blackmore’s Intranets: A Guide to Their Design, Implementation and Management (Aslib‐IMI, London, 2001) more useful.