Three Research Essays on the Effects of Culture Across IT Diffusion Within Social Networks, Organizations, and Hospitals

This dissertation focuses on two research streams: IT diffusion and culture, and each can be examined in various contexts. Specifically, this study investigates IT diffusion through online social network use, knowledge sharing towards the general organizational information systems, and hospital information systems usage. In terms of culture, espoused national cultural values, IT occupational subculture, and organizational cultural variables are examined in the following essays. Essay1: Espoused National Cultural Values and Online Social Network Use: Towards an Extension of UTAUT Prior research has developed a number of models for examining the acceptance and use of technology. This paper extends the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) beyond the established demographic and contextual variables. Building upon research from social psychology and technology adoption, our proposed model incorporated three constructs into UTAUT: information privacy concerns, hedonic motivation, and relationship expectancy. Motivated by research where individual differences were shown to moderate the relationships of the UTAUT model, this paper investigated the effect of espoused national culture values on social network adoption. Integrating these findings into UTAUT, we formulated a model to examine the individual use of social network sites. Using data from 379 respondents, the model explained over seventy percent of the variance in intentions to use online social networks. Overall, all hypotheses were supported. The findings from this research generated both theoretical and practical implications. Essay2: Development and Testing of a Scale to Measure the Effect of IT Occupational Subculture on Knowledge Sharing within Organization Personnel Based on an existing conceptual framework in culture, this study developed a scale to measure IT occupational subculture. The relationship between the occupational subculture of information technology personnel and knowledge sharing in organizations was investigated. It was suggested that knowledge sharing among IT personnel and business end-users was positively affected by some elements of IT occupational subculture. Overtime, IT occupational subculture is positively affected by knowledge sharing among IT personnel and business end-users. Drawing upon cross-cultural psychology, the study presented one possible approach through which occupational subculture manifests at the organizational level of analysis and impacts the knowledge sharing process. In doing so, behaviors related to knowledge sharing and IT diffusion at the organizational level were better understood beyond the limitations of previous IT diffusion studies. Essay3: Differentiating Eustress from Distress: An Examination of Stress Associated with HIS Use across Organizational Culture An interesting but not yet investigated research issue is why some users complain that they are tired of using information systems while some other users actively embrace the use of such systems in their daily routine, and that this taste and associated behavior varies from person to person. Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, a framework was developed to explore the antecedents of distress (negative stress) and eustress (positive stress). This study was based within the context of using hospital information systems (HIS) and we investigated two different psychological processes that played a role in the development of HIS-use strain and motivation. Additionally, espoused organizational cultural values were found to be antecedents of perceived HIS-enabled job resources (literacy support, technical support provision, technology involvement facilitation, and innovation support). While HIS-enabled job resources were positively related to eustress, HIS-enabled job demands (HIS-complexity, HIS-overload, and HIS-uncertainty) were positively related to distress. Furthermore, HIS-enabled job resource (literacy support) was found to buffer the intensity and outcome of HIS-enabled use demands - distress

Making Sense of Successful Global Teams

Global teams tend to underperform. Teamwork often frustrates members compromising the results as well as employee motivation. In practice, bad results are often camouflaged, and both management and team members lack insight into what is really driving teams and why they do not reach their goals. The underlying metaphor our economic model is built on is the “machine” where people instead of active agents with true influence are implicitly seen as resources, executors of processes and walking curriculum vitaes to be aligned in precise ways to achieve often arbitrary goals and to meet unrealistic expectations. This study takes a critical stand towards this mainstream view and applies reflexive methodology, the lens of sensemaking as well as the metaphor and the narrative as rhetorical devices to study how and why global teams form and evolve the way they do over time. The insights of this study are based on an experimental methodology studying many teams from a close range, and reveal how different structurally identical well-performing global teams executing the same tasks can be. Teams when studied from within, are dynamic phenomena rather than static sums of their parts. Alternative team metaphors, such as the “chain gang”, “dysfunctional family”, “sandbox”, “scouts” and “master cooks”, for instance, emerge. The very different team dynamics are in part explained by how successful team members are at social sensemaking – establishing shared understandings around such basic concepts as “leadership”, “good communication” and “team goals”. Individual team members and their capability and willingness to engage in self-reflection and their decisions to act or not to act on what may first appear mundane events, can have huge influence over what their teams become. Sustainably successful teams work both on the task and the team itself and consider the team as a constant work-in-progress and not a fixed entity. This study proposes innovative ways of looking at and studying global teams. People, team members, can be considered active agents, capable human beings on whose sensemaking paths depend on what these teams become and how they evolve over time

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Influence of social virtual networking as a function of teamwork effectiveness in organizations

Razvoj i upotreba timskog rada i virtuelnih društvenih mreža transformiše savremeno društvo. Oni imaju sve veći uticaj i ulogu u svim sferama života pojedinaca, poslovanja i društva u celini. Ogroman izazov za organizacije je uvođenje timskog rada u svakodnevnicu poslovanja, i suočavanje sa širokom rasprostranjenošću virtuelnih društvenih mreža. Uvidevši njihov značaj, sprovela sam istraživanje o korišćenju timskog rada i Facebook-a, kao i mogućnostima njegove primene u radu tima u cilju povećanja efektivnosti timskog rada. Kvalitativno istraživanje je sprovedeno analizom relevantne literature, dok je empirijsko istraživanje sprovedeno na uzorku od 604 zaposlenih ispitanika u Republici Srbiji tehnikom anketiranja (Computer Assisted Interviewing). Rezultati pokazuju da virtuelne društvene mreže imaju uticaj na efektivnost timskog rada, da je moguće definisati model korporativnog virtuelnog tima, kao i da je ova tema do sada nedovoljno istražena u naučnoj literaturi. Rezultati istraživanja pružaju dovoljno podataka o trenutnom stanju ove naučne oblasti u Srbiji i poslužiće kao dobra osnova daljeg naučnog i poslovnog razvoja.Development and introduction of teamwork and social virtual networks transforms modern society. They have a growing influence and role on all life areas of individuals, business and society as a whole. Huge challenge for organizations is introduction of teamwork in everyday business activities and coping with reality of prevalence of virtual social networking. Considering their importance, I conducted a research regarding the usage of teamwork and Facebook, as well as possibilities of its implementation in teamwork with the objective of increasing teamwork effectiveness. Qualitative research was conducted by analyzing relevant literature, while empirical research had a sample of 604 employees in Republic of Serbia using interviewing technique (Computer Assisted Interviewing). Results show that virtual social networks influence teamwork effectiveness, that it is possible to design the corporative model of virtual teams, and that this topic was not enough analyzed in scientific literature. Research results provide enough data on current state of this scientific field in Serbia and they will serve as a good base for future scientific and business development