Situating Conventions of Health: Transformations, Inaccuracies, and the Limits of Measuring in the Field of Self-Tracking

How is doing health transformed into a measurable entity? Based on empirical research, we will analyze relevant aspects of quantifying health in two distinct fields: diet and mood-tracking. From the perspective of the economics of convention, self-trackers within these fields are investing in new forms and measures of equivalence for how health can be measured and handled. In doing so, they are confronting three main obstacles: the inaccuracy of measuring, the cumbersome materiality of objects and everyday practice, and the fuzzy relation of everyday doings and measuring. On the one hand, self-trackers are striving for practical consent over what an “accurate” measuring looks like and in what cases inaccuracy can respectively not be tolerated. On the other hand, self-trackers draw on varying criteria for adequate accuracy depending on how they practically integrate their tracking practices into everyday life. In the economics of convention, objects are granted a vital role, supporting competent everyday actors in their coordination efforts as well as tackling normative and ethical issues. We suggest that technologies such as sensors, mHealth applications, and smartphones are involved in everyday practices as intermediate objects in varying engagements and negotiation processes. In both fields of self-tracking, quite a unique configuration of measuring, objects, resistiveness, and engagements (Thévenot 2002, 2014) emerges, making present conventions of health evasive and fragmented, and still quite unavailable to health organizations, policy makers, and users alike

Covid-19 as an Incubator Leading to Telemedicine Usage: KM Success Factors in Healthcare

Virtual hospitals offer a platform for healthcare workers to share knowledge, treat patients equally everywhere and, thus, reduce patient mortality rates. Such platforms include different technologies, for example telemedical applications. The use of these technologies and the need to get specific knowledge on the patients’ treatment was reinforced in the past years due by Covid-19. Not only the treatment of Covid-19, but also that of other diseases can be improved by increased technology use. By incorporating the KM success model, we will identify KM success factors leading to the use of virtual hospitals. This research observes the KM success model in the context of the low-digitalized field of healthcare. Consequently, we evaluate how the existing KM success model needs to be adjusted according to the peculiarities of healthcare

Jointly they edit: examining the impact of community identification on political interaction in Wikipedia

In their 2005 study, Adamic and Glance coined the memorable phrase "divided they blog", referring to a trend of cyberbalkanization in the political blogosphere, with liberal and conservative blogs tending to link to other blogs with a similar political slant, and not to one another. As political discussion and activity increasingly moves online, the power of framing political discourses is shifting from mass media to social media. Continued examination of political interactions online is critical, and we extend this line of research by examining the activities of political users within the Wikipedia community. First, we examined how users in Wikipedia choose to display (or not to display) their political affiliation. Next, we more closely examined the patterns of cross-party interaction and community participation among those users proclaiming a political affiliation. In contrast to previous analyses of other social media, we did not find strong trends indicating a preference to interact with members of the same political party within the Wikipedia community. Our results indicate that users who proclaim their political affiliation within the community tend to proclaim their identity as a "Wikipedian" even more loudly. It seems that the shared identity of "being Wikipedian" may be strong enough to triumph over other potentially divisive facets of personal identity, such as political affiliation.Comment: 33 pages, 5 figure

Ambidexterity Through the Lens of Conventions? A Qualitative Study on Personal Virtual Assistants

Personal virtual assistants (PVAs) are demanded to effectively fulfil and support employee’s tasks in organizations. Today, PVAs are mainly trusted to take over simple administrative tasks, thus, limiting their potential long-term impact on employees and entire organizations. To overcome this shortcoming, we introduce the pragmatic perspective of the Economics of Conventions (EC) to analyze and understand employees’ plural motives and behaviors that may explain sustained or fragmented potential PVA use in organizations, especially taking the organizational challenge of ambidexterity into account. In doing so, we provide a deepened understanding of PVAs’ capabilities and give propositions for their organizational implementation and use. We also offer new avenues for future research by calling for a more holistic theoretical foundation of organizational artificial intelligence solutions that consider and represent organizations and their employees in their complexity, respectively their plural orders of worth

Assisted Sustainability – A Practical IS Approach to Promote Corporate Sustainability

Sustainability is no longer a new trend, but an increasingly important necessity. Information Systems (IS) research is also addressing the topic more often, although, for example, company practices lack applicable solutions. At the same time, the demand for corporate sustainability and opportunities to apply digital enterprise solutions is growing. This situation creates an enormous potential to profitably couple the demand with the opportunities. In our paper, we discuss the potential that personal virtual assistants (PVAs) have to create corporate sustainability effects. Using a triangulated methodological approach, critical gaps are identified by means of a systematic literature review. Based on this, qualitative group discussions and interviews are used to analyze other influencing factors and correlations in an empirical study. It subsequently becomes clear that sustainability is subordinate to the cost-benefit trade-off, which most companies regard as being the most critical. Consequently, we present a practice-oriented bridging framework to overcome this drawback

SUPER: Towards the Use of Social Sensors for Security Assessments and Proactive Management of Emergencies

Social media statistics during recent disasters (e.g. the 20 million tweets relating to 'Sandy' storm and the sharing of related photos in Instagram at a rate of 10/sec) suggest that the understanding and management of real-world events by civil protection and law enforcement agencies could benefit from the effective blending of social media information into their resilience processes. In this paper, we argue that despite the widespread use of social media in various domains (e.g. marketing/branding/finance), there is still no easy, standardized and effective way to leverage different social media streams -- also referred to as social sensors -- in security/emergency management applications. We also describe the EU FP7 project SUPER (Social sensors for secUrity assessments and Proactive EmeRgencies management), started in 2014, which aims to tackle this technology gap

Körper-Ding-Assemblagen der Selbstvermessung. Theoretische Zugänge im empirischen Vergleich

Unter den Begriffen „Self-Tracking“, „Quantified Self“ oder auch „personal analytics“ entstehen derzeit noch sehr heterogene Taxonomien und Bewertungspraktiken, deren Ziel es ist, den menschlichen Körper, die individuelle Lebensführung und das Selbst berechenbar zu machen: Von der Messung des Schlafverhaltens, der sportlichen und sexuellen Aktivität über die Auswertung von Gefühlsschwankungen und der Arbeitsproduktivität bis zum ‚Sharing‘ dieser Daten im Internet bildet sich ein breites Spektrum kalkulativer Wissenspraktiken.Selbstvermessungspraktiken bilden sinnlich-materielle Verschränkungen von Menschen und Technik, denn, ob Armband am Handgelenk, Brustgurt oder Smartphone in der Tasche, häufig wird die Technik direkt und für längere Zeiträume an den Körper angebunden oder muss zumindest punktuell in seine Nähe gebracht werden, um die Vermessungen bewerkstelligen zu können. Damit gerät neben der Technik und dem Körper auch der Leib, als Ausgangspunkt menschlicher Erfahrung und In-der-Welt-seins, in den Fokus kalkulativer Praktiken der Selbstkontrolle. In der Leibmessung offenbart sich für die Subjekte Neues in Hinblick auf ihr Selbst, wird das Selbst für sich und andere in neuer Weise medial hervorgebracht und darstellbar (Vormbusch/Kappler 2014).Jedoch ist unklar, aus welcher theoretischen Perspektive man solche Schnittstellen aus Körper und Technik, die den impliziten Leib in explizite Messergebnisse übersetzt, beobachten soll. Hierzu wird ein prägnantes empirisches Fallbeispiel eines Selbstvermessers und seiner Alltagspraktiken mit Hilfe verschiedener theoretischer Zugänge beschrieben und interpretiert. Hierfür folgen wir den unterschiedlichen Blickwinkel der pragmatistischen Techniksoziologie, Körper-Leib-Phänomenologie und der Ökonomie der Konventionen, um die jeweiligen Vorzüge, aber auch blinden Flecken wechselseitig herausarbeiten zu können. Aus diesem Vergleich wird die Tragweite deutlich, die den Perspektiven zugrunde liegende Konzepte des Körpers, ggf. des Leibes und der Technik in der Interpretation spielen. Daraus leiten wir unser theoretisch-methodisches Vorgehen ab, welches die von der Ökonomie der Konventionen vernachlässigte Objekt- und Körper/Leibwelten mit in die Analyse aufnimmt und die Untersuchung eine Konvention „in the making“ ermöglicht. In diesem Sinne lässt sich die Selbstvermessung als eine entstehende Praxis beschreiben, in der Akteure versuchen, zu einer Einigung hinsichtlich der Kriterien, d.h. Taxonomien, zu gelangen, wie sie selbst und die Gesamtheit ihrer Lebens- und Selbstbezüge beurteilt werden könnten.

Are We Ready for Self-Quantifying and Preventive Health Behavior at Work? Exploring Employees’ Types and Engagement

The boundaries between life and work become blurred, and new work patterns are very demanding for employees. Future work environments should consider employees’ health and pay more attention to digital interventions for preventive health and well-being at work. Accordingly, this study focuses on identifying employees’ needs and triggers to engage in self-quantifying at work. To assess this objective, we develop employees’ types based on survey data and cluster analysis. Our empirical results emphasize that the open-minded improvers are willing to engage and that they are not susceptible at all, while the conscious pragmatists value the perceived usefulness and autonomy of self-quantifying at work. The vigilant hesitaters might be triggered by social comparison. Our research provides a new perspective on engagement in self-quantifying, and insights for preventive health behavior, healthy employees, and well-being in future work environments. These results offer starting points for meaningful work to stay employable and productive

Are We Ready for Self-Quantifying and Preventive Health Behavior at Work? Exploring Employees’ Types and Engagement

The boundaries between life and work become blurred, and new work patterns are very demanding for employees. Future work environments should consider employees’ health and pay more attention to digital interventions for preventive health and well-being at work. Accordingly, this study focuses on identifying employees’ needs and triggers to engage in self-quantifying at work. To assess this objective, we develop employees’ types based on survey data and cluster analysis. Our empirical results emphasize that the open-minded improvers are willing to engage and that they are not susceptible at all, while the conscious pragmatists value the perceived usefulness and autonomy of self-quantifying at work. The vigilant hesitaters might be triggered by social comparison. Our research provides a new perspective on engagement in self-quantifying, and insights for preventive health behavior, healthy employees, and well-being in future work environments. These results offer starting points for meaningful work to stay employable and productive

Curse or Blessing? Combining Personality Traits and Technology Acceptance to Investigate the Intention to Use of Digital Contact Tracing in Germany

In order to trace the transmission of COVID-19, digital contact tracing (DCT) provides an enormous value for the public health. However, the acceptance of the German contact tracing app, the Corona-Warn-App (CWA), falls short of the expected coverage in the general public. Accordingly, this study focuses on investigating the influencing factors on the CWA’s acceptance to demystify the missing puzzle and to face future pandemics. To assess this objective comprehensively, we investigate personality traits (guiding perception and behavior), subjective norm (expressing social influence), and trust in technology on acceptance variables. Our empirical results emphasize that besides the personality traits conscientiousness and agreeableness, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, and trust in technology play a vital role for engagement with the CWA. Our research offers starting points for the use of mobile health solutions, particularly in early epidemic stages