Individualism in the age of Internet collectivism

Citation

Schwartz, D.G. (2010), "Individualism in the age of Internet collectivism", Internet Research, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.2010.17220aaa.001

Individualism in the age of Internet collectivism

Article Type: Editorial From: Internet Research, Volume 20, Issue 1

Brian: “You are all individuals!”

Crowd (in unison): ”Yes, we are all individuals!”

Brian: “You’re all different!”

Crowd (in unison): ”Yes, we’re all different!”

Brian: “You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves!”

Crowd (in unison): ”Yes, we’ve got to work it out for ourselves!”

So went the classic scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Yes, we are all individuals, but oftentimes we are individuals with strong tendencies for collectivist behaviour. It is those tendencies, and their impact on electronic commerce, that become the centre of attention in Frost, Goode and Hart’s study “Individualist and collectivist factors affecting online repurchase intentions”.

Of course one way to avoid both individual and collective decision making is to have an automated agent take the choice out of our hands – or perhaps model an agent that can alternatively act in both modes. In “Integrating user modeling approaches into a framework for recommender agents”, Godoy, Schiaffino, and Amandi do not go quite so far as to move complete decisions to automated agents, but the do present us with a framework that enables the consideration and use of multiple user models within a single agent environment. Their system has the potential to model agent purchase behaviour under constant parameters varying only the individual/collectivist aspects of multiple agent behaviour – which could make for some interesting collaboration.

One area in which the individual and collective must meet to achieve positive results is that of e-learning. As Ho, Ko, and Lin show, an individual’s collaborative ability is one of the keys to successful e-learning outcomes. There is no shortage of studies attempting to explain the many pedagogical, technical, and social aspects influencing successful e-learning outcomes. In “Influence of online learning skills in cyberspace” we are taken a step further to investigate the relationships between e-learning system quality, the learner’s readiness and competency, and learning outcomes. An important implication of this work is that organizations need to raise levels of self-direction and collaborative skills amongst individual students prior to commencing the e-learning process in order to achieve successful e-learning outcomes.

Open Source Software (OSS) projects are built upon a foundation of the cooperative collective, without which they would not exist. Martínez-Torres, Toral, Barrero, and Cortés, in “The role of Internet in the development of future software projects”, study the activities of key individual participants in collective software development endeavours and observe “participation inequality behaviour or a concentration on a small number of developers”. Their case study shows how the structure and organization of a community can empower interactions between individuals leading to a successful development outcome.

Finally, this issue of Internet Research gives us a glimpse into India’s banking industry with “An analysis of Internet banking offerings and its determinants in India” by Malhotra and Singh. As one of the leading online applications in a country at the beginning of its Internet growth curve, following developments in this sector could serve as a bellwether for general e-commerce adoption in the Indian economy as a whole.

Welcome to another fascinating issue of Internet Research. At the start of our 20th volume let me take this opportunity to thank our dedicated Editorial Advisory Board for their expertise and continued insights; our team at Emerald, publisher Elizabeth Scott and assistant publisher Sarah Baxter for their professionalism and indispensable support; and our many ad-hoc reviewers for their ongoing guidance and constructive feedback. On behalf of the Editorial Advisory Board, Publishing Team and I, our thanks go out to you, dear readers and authors. You are all individuals, you are all different, and while you may all have to work some things out for yourselves, the collective that is formed and evolves through the sharing of research helps us indeed work out more things, together.

David G. Schwartz