Two Sides of a Single Coin: Assessing the Net Effect of Organizational Mobile IS/IT Use

The rise of mobile computing devices in organizations is unabated. For example, over 94% of Fortune 500 companies currently test or deploy iPads, and a similar percentage integrate smartphones into their technological landscape. Mobile information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) use indisputably entails a number of advantages in an organizational context, such as an increase in in-formation availability and information quality. However, researchers have started to assess the draw-backs of mobile IS/IT, including work-life conflict, spillover effects, and an increase in work stress. The goal of our study therefore is to provide a balanced overview of the benefits and drawbacks of mobile IS/IT use in a conceptual research model so as to ultimately assess the net productivity impact of mobile IS/IT use in an organizational context. We use a deductive-inductive research approach to develop our model by combining an extensive literature review and 17 expert interviews in major German and Swiss public corporations. The model therefore integrates insights from theory and prac-tice to arrive at a more holistic understanding of our research topic

Mobile computing: a scientometric assessment of global publications output

The paper examines 34641 global publications output on mobile computing research, as covered in Scopus database during 2007-16. The study finds that mobile computing research is growing at 9.35% rate per annum and its citation impact averaged to 3.39 citations per paper. The global share of top 10 most productive countries ranged from 3.29% to 31.06%, with largest global publication share coming from China (31.06%), followed by USA (15.35%), etc. Together, the top 10 most productive countries accounted for 81.24% global publication share during 2007-16. Seven of top 10 countries achieved relative citation index above world average of 1: USA (2.37), U.K. (1.78), Italy (1.72), Canada (1.64), etc. International collaborative publications share of top 10 most productive countries in mobile computing research during 2007-16 varied from 11.55% to 48.16%. Computer Science, among subjects, accounted for the largest publication share (89.55%), followed by engineering (33.58%), social sciences (18.67%), mathematics (8.74%), etc. during 2007-16. The top 20 most productive organizations and authors contributed 14.79% and 1.76% global publication share respectively and accounted for 9.5% and 5.11% global citation share respectively during 2007-16. The top 20 journals accounted for 24.11% share of total journals output of 5673 papers during 2007-16. The top 50 highly cited publications registered citations in the range from 164 to 1235 citations per paper and together these top 50 papers cumulated 16822 citations, with an average of 336.4 citations per paper. These 50 highly cited papers resulted from participation of 184 authors and 103 organizations, and were published in 31 journals, including 4 in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 2 papers each in Decision Support System, IEEE Communication Magazine, IEEE Pervasive Computing and IEEE Communication Surveys & Tutorials and 1 paper each in other 26 journals.

Effects of mobile computing enabled laboratory information system on perceived performance of geotechnical field workers

Increasing demand of earthworks like reservoirs, tunnels and both offshore and onshore structures has forced geotechnical laboratories to increase their productivity and performance at organizational as well as individual level. In this modern era of digitization and mobility, mobile computing technologies (MCT) have grown to a juncture where these can facilitate in revamping organizational mobile work processes. Though geotechnical work involves substantial amount of mobile work processes like sample collection from the field, execution of in-situ tests and exchange of information for real time mobile tasks, but the potential of mobile computing technologies has not been effectively exploited predominantly due to lack of availability of customized integrated mobile information system. To fill this gap, this study investigated the requirements of tasks and respective functionalities provided by MCT. Based primarily on the theory of task-technology fit (TTF), a perceived performance conceptual model was developed. This model was aimed at finding the effect of mobile computing on performance of field workers through first establishing a fit between geotechnical tasks and MCT. To statistically test and validate this conceptual model, quantitative research methodology was adopted by employing survey questionnaire as a research instrument for data collection and using Partial Least Squares Structured Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) for analysis of data. Based on analysis of results, all identified mobile work support functions were found useful for interdependent and time critical tasks while mobile data processing feature was only found effective for location sensitive tasks. Secondly, it was also empirically supported that once fit between task requirements and technology features is found effective; it creates substantial influence on the perceived performance of geotechnical mobile workers

A review of the current trends and future directions of camera barcode reading

Modern mobile phones or smartphones have become a pervasive and affordable device for users at different levels of age around the world. Smartphones equipped with many useful sensors, including camera, barometer, accelerometer, and digital compass. The sensors on smartphones attracted researchers and developers to develop mobile applications (apps) and study the potential use of the sensors to support daily life activities. Unlike other types of sensor, the smartphone camera has been underutilized. Analysis of the literature suggested that smartphone camera mainly serves for personal and social photography. Practically, a smartphone camera can be used as an imaging device for reading a barcode. Although barcode has been used for identifying products and items, the use of a smartphone camera as a reading device has not been explored thoroughly. Further, scholarly resources describing the fundamental knowledge of smartphone camera barcode reading is not available in the literature which could be the reason contributed to slow research progress of the domain. Therefore, this study aims to review the current trends and future directions of smartphone camera for barcode reading. Specifically, the study reviews the literature on the types of applications that are currently available and run on the standard mobile platform for reading a barcode. It also analyzes the necessary components that made up barcode reading apps. Further, the review identifies technical and non-technical issues that are critical for the development of the apps. The contributions of this work are twofold, first, it provides the fundamental knowledge on the building blocks of camera barcode reading apps, and second, it explores the issues in the current camera barcode reading apps that could encourage exploration towards addressing the issues. Practically, the findings could spark new research ideas to address the current issues related to the use of smartphone camera for barcode reading in the near future