Going Beyond the Dominant Paradigm for Information Technology Innovation Research: Emerging Concepts and Methods

Research on information technology (IT) innovation is concerned with identifying the factors that facilitate or hinder the adoption and diffusion of new IT-based processes or products. Most of this research has been conducted within the confines of a dominant paradigm wherein innovations are assumed to be beneficial, and organizations that have greater innovation-related needs and abilities are expected to exhibit a greater amount of innovative activity. This essay suggests that the dominant paradigm may be reaching the point of diminishing returns as a framework for supporting ground-breaking research, and urges researchers to adopt a more innovative approach to the study of IT innovation itself. Toward this end, I present seven opportunities for conducting new kinds of research that go beyond the dominant paradigm

Work-Unit Absenteeism: Effects of Satisfaction, Commitment, Labor Market Conditions, and Time

Prior research is limited in explaining absenteeism at the unit level and over time. We developed and tested a model of unit-level absenteeism using five waves of data collected over six years from 115 work units in a large state agency. Unit-level job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and local unemployment were modeled as time-varying predictors of absenteeism. Shared satisfaction and commitment interacted in predicting absenteeism but were not related to the rate of change in absenteeism over time. Unit-level satisfaction and commitment were more strongly related to absenteeism when units were located in areas with plentiful job alternatives

An integarted surgical suite management information system

The operational aspects, application areas, and results achieved from an integrated surgical suite management information system are described. The system, which has been operating within Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, for 4 years, captures comprehensive data for each surgical episode, performs extensive edits on these data to assure data base integrity, and utilizes this data base in multiple applications. These applications include fixed-format reporting for medical staff and management; ad hoc retrieval capabilities to support research, education, and decision making; and linkage to other hospital systems to reduce both data redundancy and paper flow.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45000/1/10916_2005_Article_BF02222176.pd

The Role of Aggregation in the Measurement of IT-Related Organizational Innovation

The extent of organizational innovation with IT, an important construct in the IT innovation literature, has been measured in many different ways. Some measures are more narrowly focused while others aggregate innovative behaviors across a set of innovations or across stages in the assimilation lifecycle within organizations. There appear to be some significant tradeoffs involving aggregation. More aggregated measures can be more robust and generalizable and can promote stronger predictive validity, while less aggregated measures allow more context-specific investigations and can preserve clearer theoretical interpretations. This article begins with a conceptual analysis that identifies the circumstances when these tradeoffs are most likely to favor aggregated measures. It is found that aggregation should be favorable when: (1) the researcher's interest is in general innovation or a model that generalizes to a class of innovations, (2) antecedents have effects in the same direction in all assimilation stages, (3) characteristics of organizations can be treated as constant across the innovations in the study, (4) characteristics of innovations can not be treated as constant across organizations in the study, (5) the set of innovations being aggregated includes substitutes or moderate complements, and (6) sources of noise in the measurement of innovation may be present. The article then presents an empirical study using data on the adoption of software process technologies by 608 US based corporations. This study\u97which had circumstances quite favorable to aggregation\u97found that aggregating across three innovations within a technology class more than doubled the variance explained compared to single innovation models. Aggregating across assimilation stages had a slight positive effect on predictive validity. Taken together, these results provide initial confirmation of the conclusions from the conceptual analysis regarding the circumstances favoring aggregation

The assimilation and diffusion of software process innovations

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-323).by Robert G. Fichman.Ph.D

Information Technology Diffusion: A Review of Empirical Research

Innovation diffusion theory provides a useful perspective on one of the most persistently challenging topics in the IT field, namely, how to improve technology assessment, adoption and implementation. For this reason, diffusion is growing in popularity as a reference theory for empirical studies of information technology adoption and diffusion, although no comprehensive review of this body of work has been published to date. This paper presents the results of a critical review of eighteen empirical studies published during the period 1981-1991. Conclusive results were most likely when the adoption context closely matched the contexts in which classical diffusion theory was developed (for example, individual adoption of personal-use technologies), or when researchers extended diffusion theory to account for new factors specific to the IT adoption context under study. Based on classical diffusion theory and other recent conceptual work, a framework is developed to guide future research in IT diffusion. The framework maps two classes of technology (ones that conform closely to classical diffusion assumptions versus ones that do not) against locus of adoption (individual versus organizational), resulting in four IT adoption contexts. For each adoption context, variables impacting adoption and diffusion are identified. Additionally, directions for future research are discussed. 1 1