Direct and Indirect Use of Information Systems in Organizations: An Empirical Investigation of System Usage in a Public Hospital

A user’s interaction with an Information System (IS) could transpire in two ways: direct and indirect. While most prior literature examines the direct interaction between a user and the system, few have examined and differentiated between direct and indirect use. In this study, we anchor on the theory of psychological attachment to study the effects of various external social factors on direct-usage and indirect-usage of an organizational IS. Survey results from 102 physicians in a public hospital reveal that punishment and informational influence are significantly related to direct-usage of the Electronic Medical Record System (EMRS) by physicians. Punishment and image are significantly associated with indirect-usage of EMRS

Social Influence in Technology Adoption Research – A Scientometric Study over two Decades Behavior

Research on the impact of social influence on the individual Information Systems (IS) user represents one of the major challenges of technology adoption research since the introduction of Technology Acceptance Model in 1989. As several IS researchers still struggle from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective to determine how social influence can be explained and measured, this approach contributes to existing adoption research by providing the findings of a literature analysis of all journal and conference articles of the JAIS journal ranking and the AIS proceedings since 1989. The results based on 149 relevant papers reveal that social influence is more significant using a individualized measurement and more important for the usage of utilitarian IS. Additionally it is shown that the point of adoption (pre-adoption vs. post adoption) and the degree of free decision-making (mandatory vs. voluntary) do not affect the impact of social influence

NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 31: The information-seeking behavior of engineers

Engineers are an extraordinarily diverse group of professionals, but an attribute common to all engineers is their use of information. Engineering can be conceptualized as an information processing system that must deal with work-related uncertainty through patterns of technical communications. Throughout the process, data, information, and tacit knowledge are being acquired, produced, transferred, and utilized. While acknowledging that other models exist, we have chosen to view the information-seeking behavior of engineers within a conceptual framework of the engineer as an information processor. This article uses the chosen framework to discuss information-seeking behavior of engineers, reviewing selected literature and empirical studies from library and information science, management, communications, and sociology. The article concludes by proposing a research agenda designed to extend our current, limited knowledge of the way engineers process information

Teacher accountability policy and sociocultural context: A cross-country study focusing on Finland and Singapore

In this thesis, I address two polarised debates in education policy: how teachers should be held accountable, and whether ‘best practices’ from high-performing education systems should be adopted in other countries. I construct a conceptual framework that maps the intended effects of teacher accountability instruments on student outcomes, via changes in teacher motivation. In this framework, the efficacy of any teacher accountability instrument depends partly on its compatibility with sociocultural context. This is partly because an accountability instrument will only influence a teacher’s motivation if the teacher regards the instrument as sufficiently meaningful, legitimate, or otherwise persuasive—and perceptions of meaning and legitimacy can be shaped by sociocultural patterns. To test this framework, I draw on two sets of empirical sources. Firstly, I use multilevel modelling to analyse cross-country survey data on education (e.g. PISA) and culture (e.g. the World Values Survey). I find that the relationship between teacher accountability instruments and student outcomes in these datasets varies with one aspect of sociocultural context, i.e. the strength of adherence to civic norms. Secondly, I analyse semi-structured interviews that I conducted with 12 lower secondary school teachers in Finland and 12 in secondary school teachers in Singapore. I find that teacher accountability instruments can have considerable effects (and side effects) on teacher motivation. However, interview participants’ responses to accountability instruments are strongly influenced by sociocultural context, and Finland’s and Singapore’s contrasting but comparably effective approaches to teacher accountability are each compatible with their respective sociocultural contexts. Based on these findings, I argue that the efficacy of teacher accountability instruments is contingent on sociocultural context (among other factors). Consequently, an accountability instrument from a top-ranked education system may have null or negative effects if transplanted elsewhere. Instead, teacher accountability policymaking needs to accommodate local sociocultural patterns. To my knowledge, this is the first study to combine cross-country educational and cultural surveys to explore the relationship between teacher accountability and sociocultural context. It is also the first study to conduct a fieldwork-based comparison of teacher accountability in Finland and Singapore.This PhD was funded by the Gates Cambridge Trust, with additional fieldwork and conference funding from the Faculty of Education and the Tunku Abdul Rahman Fund, St Catharine's College

Mobile Devices in Social Contexts

The development of mobile devices has occurred with unprecedented pace since the late nineties, and the increase of generic services has proliferated in most developed countries, driven by the expanding technological capabilities and performance of mobile platforms. This dissertation investigates how consumer objectives, orientation, and behavior can aid in explaining the adoption and use of a new type of mobile devices: “app phones”. This dissertation focuses its effort on two focal influences of adoption and use; social influences and competing forces. Through a qualitative case study and field study this dissertation explores early adoption and use of iPhones. The case study is a one-shot cross-sectional case study that investigates five individuals, related through the same social network, and their decision to adopt an iPhone prior to its release in Denmark. This adoption decision engenders high switching costs as adopters lack references to imitate and need skills to unlock and jailbreak their iPhones to make them work on Danish networks. The specific purpose of the case study is to explore how social influences impact mobile users’ early adoption decisions, as it is well known in the literature that people with similar characteristics, tastes, and beliefs often associate in the same social networks and, hence, influence each other. The field study is cross-sectional with multiple snapshots and explores fifteen individuals part of the same university study, who receives an iPhone for a period of seven months short after its release in Denmark. The specific purpose of the field study is to explore how competing forces of iPhone usage influence assimilation, i.e. the degree to which the iPhone is used, over time. The dissertation, furthermore, contains a systematic literature review. The main contribution of this dissertation is reported through four articles and is directed at both academic researchers and practitioners. The study emphasizes the importance of social influences and competing forces in the investigation of adoption and use of certain mobile devices

You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Data Access in US Small and Medium Sized Cities

abstract: This research examines data exchange between city departments and external stakeholders; particularly, why city departments have different capacity to access data from departments in the same city, other public agencies, private and nonprofit organizations. Data access is of theoretical interest because it provides the opportunity to investigate how public organizations and public managers deal with a portfolio of relationships in a loosely structured context characterized by dynamics of power and influence. Moreover, enhancing data access is important for public managers to increase the amount and diversity of information available to design, implement, and support public services and policies. Drawing from institutionalism, resource dependence theory, and collaboration scholarship, I developed a set of hypotheses that emphasize two dimensions of data access in local governments. First, a vertical dimension which includes institutions, the social environment - particularly power relationships - and coordination mechanisms implemented by managers. This dimension shows how exogenous - not controlled by public managers - and endogenous - controlled by public managers - factors contribute to a public organization’s ability to access resources. Second, a horizontal dimension which considers the characteristics of the actors involved in data exchange and emphasizes the institutional and social context of intra-organizational, intra-sectoral and cross-sectoral data access. Hypotheses are tested using survey data from a 2016 nationally representative sample of 500 US cities with populations between 25,000 and 250,000. By focusing on small- and medium-sized cities, I contribute to a literature that typically focuses on data sharing in US large cities and federal agencies. Results show that the influence of government agencies and the influence of civil society have opposite effect on data access, whereas government influence limits data access while influence from civil society increases capacity to access data. The effectiveness of coordination mechanisms varies according to the stakeholder type. Public managers rely on informal networks to exchange data with other departments in the city and other governmental agencies while they leverage lateral coordination mechanisms - informal but unplanned - to coordinate data access from nongovernmental organizations. I conclude by discussing the implications for practice and future research.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Public Administration and Policy 201

Staff Conceptualization of and Engagement With Diversity and Inclusion in Collegiate Recreation: A Multilevel Exploration

The purpose of this study was to examine how collegiate recreation professionals conceptualize and engage in diversity and inclusion efforts in their roles as well as what are the influences and perceived outcomes of that engagement. Informed by constructivist and critical paradigms, an instrumental case study design was utilized to collect data from one collegiate recreation organization. Data sources included interviews with 13 collegiate recreation professionals, observations, writing activities, document analysis, and a researcher journal. Thematic analysis was utilized to examine the data. Four main themes were identified: (a) complex layers of diversity and inclusion, (b) layers of influences, (c) layers of outcomes, and (d) layers of learning. The complex layers of diversity and inclusion theme illustrates how collegiate recreation professionals understood the concepts of diversity and inclusion distinctly but also in connection to each other. This theme also captured participants’ efforts related to those concepts. The subthemes included diversity is identity, diversity is difference, inclusion is a feeling, inclusion is action, and the work is never done. The layers of influence theme reflect how the participants articulated multiple sources of influence regarding their engagement in diversity and inclusion efforts. Some influences related to their professional lives, but many influences were personal in nature. The subthemes were personal identities and experiences, campus community members, and the collegiate recreation field. The layers of outcomes theme illuminated the perceptions of the study participants in relation to the results of their diversity and inclusion efforts. The subthemes included outcomes for recreation users, outcomes for the department, and outcomes shared by both. Finally, the layers of learning theme demonstrated how learning was an integral component of diversity and inclusion efforts. As such, this final theme connected back into the prior three themes as noted by the subthemes of learning is a personal action, learning is an influence, and learning is an outcome. The findings offered guidance for how collegiate recreation professionals could begin or enhance their own engagement in diversity and inclusion efforts as well as illustrated how efforts could occur within numerous levels of a collegiate recreation organization

Student Attitudes Toward the Assessment Process: An Empirical Analysis of the Formation and the Consequences of Grading-related Justice Perceptions

Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die Gerechtigkeitswahrnehmung Studierender in Bezug auf die Notenvergabe. Der Fokus liegt auf den Verfahren anhand derer Noten vergeben wer-den: Inwiefern sind die Studierenden in den Benotungsprozess involviert? Sind die Verfahren objektiv, oder lassen sie Platz für Willkür? Wie werden die Studierenden über die Notenvergabe informiert? Um ein möglichst umfassendes Bild notenbezogener Gerechtigkeitswahrnehmung zu liefern, nähert sich die Dissertation der Thematik mittels zwei komplementärer Perspektiven. Der erste Teil der Dissertation untersucht, welche Konsequenzen wahrgenommene Ungerechtigkeit mit sich bringt. Daran anknüpfend widmet der zweite Teil sich der Entstehung von Gerechtigkeits-wahrnehmung. So wird zum einen die praktische Relevanz fairer Benotungsverfahren de-monstriert, zum anderen werden konkrete Ansatzpunkte identifiziert, über die einem negativen Gerechtigkeitsempfinden entgegengewirkt werden kann. Diese Punkte waren Gegenstand von insgesamt drei Artikeln. Der erste Artikel befasst sich mit der Frage, inwiefern als ungerecht wahrgenommene Benotungsverfahren sich auf das Vorha-ben auswirken, das Studium vorzeitig zu beenden. Der zweite Artikel analysiert, wie Gerechtig-keitswahrnehmungen vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher struktureller Rahmenbedingungen im Vergleich zwischen Studienfächern entstehen. Der dritte Artikel untersucht schließlich die Mechanismen, über welche die Studierenden verschiedene Merkmale einer Situation kombi-nieren um zu einem Gerechtigkeitsurteil zu gelangen

Advances in the sociology of trust and cooperation: theory, experiments, and field studies

The problem of cooperation and social order is one of the core issues in the social sciences. The key question is how humans, groups, institutions, and countries can avoid or overcome the collective good dilemmas that could lead to a Hobbesian war of all against all. Using the general set of social dilemmas as a paradigmatic example, rigorous formal analysis can stimulate scientific progress in several ways. The book, consisting of original articles, provides state of the art examples of research along these lines: theoretical, experimental, and field studies on trust and cooperation. The theoretical work covers articles on trust and control, reputation formation, and paradigmatic articles on the benefits and caveats of abstracting reality into models. The experimental articles treat lab based tests of models of trust and reputation, and the effects of the social and institutional embeddedness on behavior in cooperative interactions and possibly emerging inequalities. The field studies test these models in applied settings such as cooperation between organizations, informal care, and different kinds of collaboration networks. The book will be exemplary for rigorous sociology and social sciences more in general in a variety of ways: There is a focus on effects of social conditions, in particular different forms of social and institutional embeddedness, on social outcomes. Theorizing about and testing of effects of social contexts on individual and group outcomes is one of the main aims of sociological research. Modelling efforts include formal explications of micro-macro links that are typically easily overlooked when argumentation is intuitive and impressionistic Extensive attention is paid to unintended effects of intentional behavior, another feature that is a direct consequence of formal theoretical modelling and in-depth data-analyses of the social processe

Using Design Science Research to Develop a Conceptual Solution for Improving Knowledge Sharing in a Virtual Workspace

Enhancements in technology have resulted in significant changes to day-to-day operations of organizations in the present day. One especially noteworthy change is the alteration in the nature of teams from being co-located, with face-to-face interaction, to virtual, with the involvement of information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate communication. This change in team character has had a downstream impact on a key element of an organization’s competitive edge, namely knowledge. Overall, there is consensus that knowledge is a crucial facet of the competitive edge of an organization. Consequently, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, and organizational learning are essential components of an organization’s sustained existence and effectiveness in the competitive marketplace and considerable academic and industry attention has been paid to this matter. However, the present day scenario of global organizations and dispersed teams, within and across geographies, transforms the matter of knowledge sharing and organizational learning into one of great complexity. Thus, the present study was interested in understanding the modalities of knowledge sharing and consequently organizational learning in the context of a virtual workspace, that is, teams operating from physically distinct locations and communicating using ICT tools. Overall, the objective of this study was to propose a conceptual model using the Design Science Research (DSR) approach to enhance organizational learning and knowledge sharing in the context of the virtual workspaces of the present day work environment. Further, the conceptual model is extended to propose the use of a Learnin