Academic-Community Partnerships for Advanced Information Processing in Low Technology-Support Settings

The focus of this research is on knowledge workers in a particular kind of setting: not-for-profit community agencies that have low technology-support, but need to take full advantage of the power of advanced information technologies. Knowledge workers in these settings, given adequate assistance from a neutral agent and/or prototype applications, can successfully develop and use quite sophisticated information systems to enhance their work. The paper draws on case studies of knowledge workers in two community agencies who have partnered with academia, and identifies the specific information technology problems faced by community agencies, the source of these problems, and how the academic- community partnership can act to solve the problems

25R. eBPMN for Process Modeling: A design science/HIPS evaluation

Organizations use models to depict their strategic business processes and systems in order to provide an abstraction of the work carried out in these processes and systems. These models are drawn using different modeling notations, such as REA, data flow diagrams, and BPMN. Not only is there variation in what concepts are included in these models, but this variation leads to communication difficulties within and between organizations. The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of a newly developed notation, eBPMN, which includes concepts from all widely used models and is intended to serve as a single notation for the entire organization. eBPMN extends BPMN notation (which is intended as an extensible standard for modeling business procedures) to include concepts from all modeling approaches. In the evaluation the new notation eBPMN is compared against existing notations on efficiency (time required to comprehend the model) and effectiveness (comprehension of the process modeled)

Refining Organizational Adoption

Organizational adoption of innovations is complex with a large theoretical literature. This complexity is captured in TOE (Technology, Organization, and Environment) models that often place equal weight on these three groups. This study examined the theoretical constructs in TOE by assessing how technology, organization, and environment interacted to impact five different organizations and their adoption of open source software (OSS). Findings supported the development of an additional construct (socio-technical) that provided new insights into the adoption process. Using an adaptive structuration approach, the socio-technical construct provided new insight on the differences in organizational approaches to IT. This mediated traditional adoption constructs, helping to explain the differences in organizational adoption, and provided an explanation for the different adoption outcomes. Utilization of this new construct can assist practitioners when planning for the adoption of new technologies in organizations

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the IS Context: A Research Agenda

n organizations in general, cooperative behavior across functional units is increasingly essential with the adoption of total quality initiatives and self-managed work groups. Within the Information Systems (IS) function, cooperation across and within functional boundaries remains critical. In today\u27s organizations, Information Systems personnel (ISP) and users collaborate in a variety of ways (e.g., business process reengineering, shared responsibility for information centers or end-user computing, joint application development, development of chargeback schemes, and distributed computing). Information Systems personnel routinely contribute to team projects that span departments. For example, informationengineers, database administrators, and systems analysts work together during various stages of database application projects. Within IS, the frequency of day-to-day activities that span departmental or functional boundaries (e.g., teamwork, shared responsibilities, and consultative activities) is unusually high. In these boundary-spanning activities, ISP need to exhibit a high degree of behavior not explicitly detailed in formal job descriptions; this type of behavior is labelled extra-role . Additionally, many IS positions, comprised of a wide range of activities, offer unique opportunities for extra-role behavior because these jobs, often professional in nature, operate under significant autonomy. Given this combination of high need and latitude for extra-, or pro-, role behavior in IS, we argue that it is imperative to understand this behavior. To support research in this area, this paper defines the construct, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, which has been used in organizational research of extra-role behavior, discusses how this construct could describe behavior in the IS work setting, and poses research questions about the predictors and outcomes of such behavior

Configuring Technology Mediated Service Encounters: A Multi-level Model of Equifinality for Telemedicine Work Design

The world economy is rapidly shifting from a manufacturing based economy to a service economy, where successful service encounters are a focus of organizational work. Service encounters are critical interactions between service providers and recipients that indicate an organization’s capability to fulfill its mission and shape consumers’ impressions of the organization (M. J. Bitner, Booms, & Mohr, 1994; Winsted, 1997). Companies are increasingly turning to technology to enhance information and communication flow to customers in order to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and/or quality (Froehle & Roth, 2004). It is unclear to what extent (if at all) research that investigates the dimensions of work in the form of face-to-face service encounters addresses the phenomena created by introducing technology into the consumer-service provider encounter process to create a virtual service space (Froehle & Roth, 2004). In healthcare, service encounters occur regularly between a healthcare provider and a patient. One such encounter, which is mediated by technology, is the use of telemedicine. While telemedicine is a form of virtual work that can deliver a wide range of healthcare services, this study uses video conferencing for direct patient care as the research context (see Figure 1). The sparse research on technology use in the context of technology mediated service encounters has centered on task execution work (e.g., routine customer service), rather than relationship building (e.g. consulting/ expert services) work (e.g., Mary Jo Bitner, Ostrom, & Meuter, 2002; Froehle, 2006). Furthermore, most work to date has focused on in a lean media environment (e.g. e-mail), rather than a rich media environment (e.g. video conferencing). Given current medical attention to patient-centered care, the telemedicine encounter provides a work phenomenon that entwines task execution and relationship building within a rich media environment. In order for such a critical service encounter to be successfully executed, additional knowledge is needed about the nature of this encounter and particularly how to explain how order comes about in using this technology from a multi-level perspective (outside environment level, organizational unit level, team level, and individual level). Technology mediated service encounters introduce new ways to communicate, new processes, and opens what may have been a relatively closed network in the past with face-to-face encounters to something more complex, multi-level and organic. Technology must be used in a way to provide an interdependent, complementary balance at all levels (in this case, outside environment level, organizational unit level, team level, and individual level) to provide some form of equifinality to reach intended goals. We use configuration theory ((Meyer, Tsui, & Hinings, 1993) to explore the give and take among levels by identifying various attributes and formal structures at each level of analysis that might encourage technology fit into the work context of providing direct patient care through the use of video conferencing. We show that equifinality in the case of complex virtual work structures, like telemedicine encounters, is a give and take of counterbalancing fit facilitators and inhibitors to produce order in complex technological work situations

Diffusion Theory and the Sustainability of IS Innovations:A Greener Earth beneath the Clouds

Our world is increasingly conscious of environmental issues. In IT, one concern is that of the legacy IT infrastructure and the need to improve its sustainability. In this paper we argue that the sustainability of any IS innovation will be formally assessed as organizations and individuals consider such innovations for adoption. Therefore we propose an addition to the classic diffusion of innovation factors of a sixth factor, Relative Sustainability. Relative Sustainability can be initially operationalized using the three eco-goals identified by Watson et al, 2010: 1. Eco-efficiency measures whether an IT good or service reduces ecological impacts and resource use and is competitively priced. 2. Eco-effectiveness measures how well an IT innovation has been designed from the beginning to be sustainable. 3. Eco-equity, which measures how well the IT good or service will result in a fair distribution of resources within and between generations. Measuring eco-equity will require predictions about both initial resource use of an IT innovation (e.g., energy consumption), but also longer-term resource issues, such as final disposal of an IT product (are IT components recyclable or biodegradable, or will they pollute the environment?). We consider the case of the diffusion of cloud computing, in particular the establishment of data centers for private and public clouds. Cloud computing is selected because it represents a transformational change in how computing is done on many levels. The replacement of distributed data centers with fewer, centralized data centers delivers eco-efficiency, especially in energy and water savings and toxic disposal. Also, the new improved designs of data centers that employ a mix of technologies (including server virtualization, sensors and next-generation air- and equipment-cooling processes) and services that aid utilization of far less non-renewable resources, offer the promise of eco-equity. Finally, the massive computing power of cloud centers facilitates innovation of sustainable products delivering opportunities for eco-effectiveness