IT service management: towards a contingency theory of performance measurement

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) focuses on IT service creation, design, delivery and maintenance. Measurement is one of the basic underlying elements of service science and this paper contributes to service science by focussing on the selection of performance metrics for ITSM. Contingency theory is used to provide a theoretical foundation for the study. Content analysis of interviews of ITSM managers at six organisations revealed that selection of metrics is influenced by a discrete set of factors. Three categories of factors were identified: external environment, parent organisationand IS organisation. For individual cases, selection of metrics was contingent on factors such as organisation culture, management philosophy and perspectives, legislation, industry sector, and customers, although a common set of four factors influenced selection of metrics across all organisations. A strong link was identified between the use of a corporate performance framework and clearly articulated ITSM metrics

Trends in quality management research in higher education institutions

The purpose of this study is to determine the state of research in quality management in higher education institutions based on a review of the academic literature. The aim is to provide universities with the best evidence for informing their focus and models for quality improvement. Despite quality’s role growing in importance as universities strive to compete in an increasingly underfunded market for students and research funds the review shows that current research is limited in volume and scope. To ensure the widest coverage in our systematic literature review we use three databases: ScienceDirect, ABI/Inform, and Emerald. The findings show that the three most common topics are quality management implementation issues, quality management models, techniques and tools, and quality management dimensions. The key quality management enabling dimensions found are: people management, process management and information and analysis, while the results dimension is predominantly focused on an understanding of stakeholders’ requirements and feedback on their perceptions of performance. We find in this literature that students are discussed as both end customers as graduates and participants in the learning process who have views on their experience. Also provided is an analysis that shows popular journal outlets, research methodologies used and country focus. The paper concludes with recommendations for the development of quality management for universities, and a future research agenda. This article is the first literature of research in quality management in Higher Education Institutions following the model used in previous literature reviews on quality management and operations management

Assessing DFID's Results in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: An Impact Review

Over the 2011 to 2015 period, the UK government set itself the goal of providing 60 million people with clean water, improved sanitation or hygiene promotion interventions (a type of development assistance known collectively as WASH). In 2015 it reported that it had exceeded this target, reaching 62.9 million people. We conducted an impact review of DFID's WASH portfolio to identify whether its results claims were credible, and to explore whether programmes were doing all they could to maximise impact and value for money. The review concluded that UK aid has made a significant contribution to improving WASH access in low-income countries, and that its claim of reaching 62.9 million people is based on sound evidence. However, the review highlighted sustainability as an area of particular concern, with not enough being done to ensure that improved WASH access was becoming a permanent part of people's lives. It concluded that DFID needs to do more to address long-term problems like water security, maintenance of infrastructure, strengthening local institutions so they can manage services, and changing behaviour. It also found improvements are needed to ensure value for money – with a stronger focus on lifetime investment costs – and to target vulnerable people as well as hard-to-reach communities, in line with the Global Goals commitment to 'leave no one behind'. The review gave DFID a 'Green-Amber' rating, recognising the impressive results, but also underscoring the need to better maximise the impact and sustainability of UK aid in this important sector

Healing conversations: Developing a practical framework for clinical communication between Aboriginal communities and healthcare practitioners

In recognition of the ongoing health disparities experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (hereafter Aboriginal), this scoping review explores the role and impact of the clinical communication process on Aboriginal healthcare provision. A medical education lens is applied, looking at the utility of a tailored clinical communication framework to assist health practitioners work more effectively with Aboriginal peoples and communities. The initial framework, building on existing communication guides, proposes four domains: content, process, relational and environmental. It places emphasis on critical self-reflection of the health practitioner’s own cultural identity and will be guided by collective Aboriginal world-views in select Australian settings. Using a two-eyed seeing approach the framework will be developed and tested in health professional education. The aim of this research journey is to enable health practitioners to have more effective healthcare conversations with Aboriginal peoples, working toward more socially just and equitable healthcare interactions and outcome

Performance-based financing as a health system reform : mapping the key dimensions for monitoring and evaluation

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Exploring Maintainability Assurance Research for Service- and Microservice-Based Systems: Directions and Differences

To ensure sustainable software maintenance and evolution, a diverse set of activities and concepts like metrics, change impact analysis, or antipattern detection can be used. Special maintainability assurance techniques have been proposed for service- and microservice-based systems, but it is difficult to get a comprehensive overview of this publication landscape. We therefore conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to collect and categorize maintainability assurance approaches for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices. Our search strategy led to the selection of 223 primary studies from 2007 to 2018 which we categorized with a threefold taxonomy: a) architectural (SOA, microservices, both), b) methodical (method or contribution of the study), and c) thematic (maintainability assurance subfield). We discuss the distribution among these categories and present different research directions as well as exemplary studies per thematic category. The primary finding of our SLR is that, while very few approaches have been suggested for microservices so far (24 of 223, ?11%), we identified several thematic categories where existing SOA techniques could be adapted for the maintainability assurance of microservices

The Role of Boards in Reviewing Information Technology Governance (ITG) as Part of Organizational Control Environment Assessments

IT Governance (ITG) is an important topic as US companies must now monitor ITG under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) (Hoffmann, 2003). Trites (2003) indicates that directors are responsible for strategic planning, internal control structures and business risk. The control environment is defined in Australian Auditing Standard AUS 402 to mean "the overall attitude, awareness and actions of management regarding internal control and its importance to the entity". This paper contributes to the knowledge of ITG by forming an integrated ITG Literature (IIL) which links prior research to four key dimensions of ITG. The paper presents a review of literature on ITG performance measurement systems which assess the ability of organizations to achieve these four ITG dimensions. A revised ITG Dimensions Model offered for consideration. The final contribution of the paper is to propose critical issues Boards should consider as part of their assessment of organizational control environments