Towards a Theory of IS Support-Related Activity

Information systems (IS) support department has become one major source of knowledge for organizational end-users (employees) as organizations increasingly adopt complex and integrated information technologies. Despite its significance to IS post-adoptive use, IS support-related activity remains under-studied. This study aims at developing an integrative conceptualization of IS support-related activity by drawing on IS use and adaptation theory. We conducted an in-depth qualitative study in the organizational support of a new procurement system and analyzed 591 service interactions between IS support personnel and end-users. Our data analysis suggests that IS support-related activity is a multifaceted phenomenon that comprises a set of increasingly complex behaviors, including technology-oriented behaviors, user-oriented behaviors, and activities that IS personnel undertake to adapt to the technology-user-business context. In particular, IS support personnel were found performing three major types of IS support activity -- informating, diagnosing, and boundary-spanning – which were associated with IS use behavior and required different types of knowledge in IS support context. This study contributes to IS literature by developing a comprehensive view of IS support-related activity, extending existing conceptualizations that exclusively focuses on technology or on human agency. The findings highlight the complexity and dynamics in IS post-implementation era, and present an urgent need to evaluate the challenges in and competence required for IS support work

HEALTH POLICY INTERVENTION IN SCHOOLS PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES AMONG THE PUPILS

Today, more and more children are overweight or obese than ever before. Schools can play a prominent role in easing the situation. Schools have a great potential through the curriculum, health promoting programming and transportation to preventing children from becoming obese and overweight. However schools are complex social systems that does not necessarily by themselves adapt to this new health promoting role and thus committed management support is needed. Since schools are complex organizational structures convenient organizational structure are needed to formalize the praxis that stakeholders at schools should perform. Policies has become the preferred organizational instrument that management can use to frame the health promoting intentions. However since schools are expected to perform more and more educational obligations, policies seem to emerge in many sub domains of the schools setting. For instance schools are expected to have food and nutrition policy (FNP), physical activity policy (PAP) and a health policy. However instead of seeing these policies as separate entities this paper speculate that there is a possible interrelatedness between the policies. In other words could it be that it is not so much the specific content of the policy as it is the policy process or the awareness raising related do it that produce healthier behaviour

On the Importance of Human Activity Systems in Organization Modeling for IS Development

This paper investigates the context of information systems (IS) development, underlining the importance of organization modeling in the process of IS design and construction, which should satisfy different scenarios of human purposeful activities according to various organizational imperatives. The research is driven by a belief that the design issues of IS support should be situated in the context of social processes in which, in a specific organizational scenario, a particular group of people can conceptualize their world and hence the purposeful action they wish to undertake. This provides the basis for ascertaining through organizational modeling, what information support is needed by those who undertake that action. Only then does it become appropriate to ask how modern information technology (IT) can help to provide that support. And we call this the meaning attribution approach to conceiving IS support based on characterizing, through action research, the underlying human activity systems (HAS), a term often used in soft systems methodology (SSM). The paper concludes by reiterating the main context for IS work is the appropriate systems thinking, and meeting the challenge of designing suitable IS starts from a re-thinking of what is entailed in providing informational support to purposeful action in the real world of HAS modeling, by which IS architects could learn of the organization’s continual adjustments to its changing world

Supporting Collaborative Communication in a Multi-layer Meta-process Model for Evolutionary Shared Workflows

A key planning activity within a Virtual Enterprise (VE) is to establish agreed inter-organizational processes. This activity, or meta-process, has to allow for gradual evolution of the VE processes and for a multi layer development from informal business agreements to precise workflows. To support this meta-process, a collaborative electronic whiteboard supported by a tuplespace is proposed. The whiteboard supports a mixed graphical and text interface, with support for keeping track of the changes made. The participating organizations upload workflow definitions from their own IT systems into the tuplespace. Workflows are then discussed, modified and evolved before being downloaded again and mapped to the partners’ individual systems

Towards a Unifying Process Framework for Services Knowledge Management

Activities concerned with the design, planning and execution of services are becoming increasingly complex. This is due to the involvement of many different stakeholders, the complexity of the service systems themselves, and the dynamic nature of their organizational and ICT environments. Service knowledge management helps share and reuse relevant knowledge among the different stakeholders, and therefore emerges as a critical factor to perform service activities with required efficiency and quality. Recent advances in knowledge management provide promising opportunities to support individual service activities within a single domain. Yet, sharing knowledge throughout the service life-cycle and across service domains is still very challenging. The source of service knowledge, its usage, update frequency, encoding and associated stakeholders may vary depending upon the service activity and the service domain. Based on a critical analysis of currently proposed frameworks, we argue that a process framework approach is beneficial for service knowledge management. To support our claim, we offer an abstract template and a typical service life-cycle that can be adopted to integrate heterogeneous service knowledge from diverse sources

DESIGNING INFORMATION SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT CUSTOMER FEEDBACK: AN ORGANIZATIONAL MESSAGE SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE

Because technological and feature advantages are short-lived, service after the sale is emerging as an important source of competitive advantage. One way for an organization to differentiate itself from its competitors on the basis of service is the way the organization handles customer feedback. However, before customer feedback can provide competitive advantage or even serve as a basis for decision support, the incoming messages must be captured and routed to the appropriate decision makers in the organization. This paper explores issues related to the design of information systems to support customer feedback from an organizational information processing perspective. After developing the position that all transaction processing systems are in fact organizational message systems, the paper reviews the logistical properties associated with three approaches for customer feedback systems based on the nature of the transaction processing activity associated with each approach: structured (comment cards), semi-structured (toll-free telephone lines), and unstructured (mail). Trade-offs between efficiency and information richness, and the potential roles for information technology are described for the three approaches. The paper concludes by describing the potential relationship between product attributes and the design of customer feedback systems

A Framework for an adaptive grid scheduling: an organizational perspective

Grid systems are complex computational organizations made of several interacting components evolving in an unpredictable and dynamic environment. In such context, scheduling is a key component and should be adaptive to face the numerous disturbances of the grid while guaranteeing its robustness and efficiency. In this context, much work remains at low-level focusing on the scheduling component taken individually. However, thinking the scheduling adaptiveness at a macro level with an organizational view, through its interactions with the other components, is also important. Following this view, in this paper we model a grid system as an agent-based organization and scheduling as a cooperative activity. Indeed, agent technology provides high level organizational concepts (groups, roles, commitments, interaction protocols) to structure, coordinate and ease the adaptation of distributed systems efficiently. More precisely, we make the following contributions. We provide a grid conceptual model that identifies the concepts and entities involved in the cooperative scheduling activity. This model is then used to define a typology of adaptation including perturbing events and actions to undertake in order to adapt. Then, we provide an organizational model, based on the Agent Group Role (AGR) meta-model of Freber, to support an adaptive scheduling at the organizational level. Finally, a simulator and an experimental evaluation have been realized to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach

Drivers of cost system development in hospitals: Results of a survey.

While many hospitals are under pressure to become more cost efficient, new costing systems such as Activity-based costing (ABC) may form a solution. However, the factors that may facilitate (or inhibit) cost system changes towards ABC have not yet been disentangled in a specific hospital context. Via a survey study of hospitals, we discovered that cost system development in hospitals could largely be explained by hospital specific factors. Issues such as the support of the medical parties towards cost system use, the awareness of problems with the existing legal cost system, the way hospitals and physicians arrange reimbursements, should be considered if hospitals refine their cost system. Conversely, ABC-adoption issues that were found to be crucial in other industries are less important. Apparently, installing a cost system requires a different approach in hospital settings. Especially, results suggest that hospital management should not underestimate the interest of the physician in the process of redesigning cost systems.Activity based costing; Cost control; Factors; Hospital context; Hospitals; Industry; Management; Organizational change; Problems; Processes; Studies; Systems;

ACCOUNTING AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS IN CONDITIONS OF DIGITALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

The aim of the research is to identify the directions of accounting and economic analysis in the context of globalization and electronic data processing. The role of accounting and economic analysis in managing sustainable development of the national economy and economic entities is determined. The theoretical and methodological design of improved systems of accounting and economic analysis of  enterprises’ economic activity including expanded and updated functions, tasks and principles in accordance with current conditions of digitalization and globalization of public relations is presented. It allows creating appropriate organizational and methodological provision of accounting and analytical support of managing enterprises’ activity to increase reliability and relevance of accounting information. The authors prove that  improved components of the accounting and economic analysis system of enterprises’ economic activity in the conditions of digitalization and globalization of economic relations will enhance application of  accounting techniques, procedures, methodological support, management and internal control.

A Framework of Information Systems Development Concepts

Background: Information Systems Development (ISD) is responsible for designing and implementing information systems that support organizational strategy, leveraging business models and processes. Several perspectives on this activity can be found in the literature, addressing – often in an undifferentiated manner – approaches, lifecycles, methodologies, and process models, among others. Objectives: The vast diversity of ideas and concepts surrounding ISD and the multiple underlying views on the subject make it harder for researchers and practitioners to understand the relevant aspects of this important activity. This article aims to systematize and organize ISD’s main concepts to create a coherent perspective. Methods/Approach: We conducted a literature review and thematic analysis of ISD\u27s main concepts. Results: To contribute to filling the research gap, this article proposes a new framework that addresses the key aspects related to ISD. Conclusions: The framework comprises ISD’s core concepts, such as lifecycles, process models, deployment approaches, and methodologies