Can You Hear What I See? Nonverbal Communication and the Changing Face of TML

Business training and education are changing. Organizations have experienced dramatic changes in their structure, competitive environment, and the demographics and demands of their employees. As a result, organizations are seeking new and innovative ways to train employees. At the same time the evolution of technology mediated learning tools (TML) has resulted in flexible, interactive, engaging, learning technology tools that promote experiential learning, analytical thinking and problem solving. Simulation based technology mediated learning (SimTML) tools are gaining popularity in practice. SimTML facilitates lifelike environments that utilize animated pedagogical agents (APAs) which employ nonverbal communication traits in their interaction with the user. The effect is a lifelike, face-to-face interaction, between the user and the APA. The result is a flexible, interactive, engaging, TML tool that promotes experiential learning, analytical thinking and problem solving. This paper explores current SimTML technology, how we interact with learning technology, and provides selection and evaluation principles for organizations to use when evaluating SimTML tools for their own training programs

Health Information Systems: Design Theor, Principles, and Application

Can a system be designed to increase user autonomy? This question, which is especially important in the healthcare industry are addressed in this project. Advancements in medical knowledge have resulted in patients living longer with chronic disease, an increased number of treatment options, and more complex decisions for patients. Patients are increasingly relying on information technology to obtain information regarding their healthcare decisions. As a result they are more informed, more autonomous. Autonomy is the ability to make decisions for oneself without undue influence or duress. Two dimensions of autonomy have been identified as being important to patients; decision-making and information gathering. It is proposed here that patient decision support systems can aid patients in gathering information in order to make informed decisions, resulting in a more autonomous patient. The design science paradigm frames this project. Design principles are developed to address a void in the literature regarding the evolution of information systems in the healthcare industry. The principles embrace the current principles and ethical guidelines in both the medical and computing professions. The instantiation of these design principles results in a patient decision support system for advance directives. The impact of the system on user autonomy will be tested at medium sized hospice in Central Florida. Contributions are made to both theory and practice through the development of a set of design principles and the application that embodies them

Triage and Ongoing Care for Critically Ill Patients in the Emergency Department: Results from a National Survey of Emergency Physicians

Introduction: We conducted a cross-sectional study at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to elicit emergency physician (EP) perceptions regarding intensive care unit (ICU) triage decisions and ongoing management for boarding of ICU patients in the emergency department (ED). We assessed factors influencing the disposition decision for critically ill patients in the ED to characterize EPs’ perceptions about ongoing critical care delivery in the ED while awaiting ICU admission.Methods: Through content expert review and pilot testing, we iteratively developed a 25-item written survey targeted to EPs, eliciting current ICU triage structure, opinions on factors influencing ICU admission decisions, and views on caring for critically ill patients “boarding” in the ED for >4-6 hours.Results: We approached 732 EPs at a large, national emergency medicine conference, achieving 93.6% response and completion rate, with 54% academic and 46% community participants. One-fifth reported having formal ICU admission criteria, although only 36.6% reported adherence. Common factors influencing EPs’ ICU triage decisions were illness severity (91.1%), ICU interventions needed (87.6%), and diagnosis (68.2%), while ICU bed availability (13.5%) and presence of other critically ill patients in ED (10.2%) were less or not important. While 72.1% reported frequently caring for ICU boarders, respondents identified high patient volume (61.3%) and inadequate support staffing (48.6%) as the most common challenges in caring for boarding ICU patients.Conclusion: Patient factors (eg, diagnosis, illness severity) were seen as more important than system factors (eg, bed availability) in triaging ED patients to the ICU. Boarding ICU patients is a common challenge for more than two-thirds of EPs, exacerbated by ED volume and staffing constraints

Designing an Academic Project Management Program: A Collaboration between a University and a PMI Chapter

The demand for project management skills in industry is increasing resulting in a higher demand for project management educational programs. Universities are addressing industry demand by developing project management courses, degree offerings and certificate programs that focus on both technical and general project management skills. While teaching project management skills has been widely covered in the literature, little focus has been given to close collaboration with industry in developing university project management programs that reflect industry demands and provide opportunities to work with project management professionals and with “real world” projects. As a case study, we report a collaborative effort between one university and a local chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI) that results in the development and implementation of an undergraduate project management minor program. We describe the evolution and process of developing a program in which project management professionals from the PMI are actively engaged in student learning by serving a variety of roles in the classroom. We describe the lessons learned over the evolution of the program, as well as refinements to the courses, conducted in order to enhance the grounding of formal education with practical industry experience resulting in an academically rigorous and practical education

DISCOMAP: A System to Support Distributed Cognition in Inquiring Organizations

Inquiring systems theory (Churchman, 1971), cognitive mapping (Lee, et al., 1992) and hermeneutics (Boland, et al., 1994) have provided the basis for systems to support organizational learning, distributed cognition, and knowledge management. Boland, et al. (1994) describe three entities in such systems and six principles for their design. Richardson (2005) argues that communication is neglected element in these systems and integrates Habermas’s (1984, 1985) theory of communicative action, specifically discursive action, to develop revised design principles. This paper describes DISCOMAP, a system that instantiates and tests the revised design principles using discussion forums and The Planners Laboratory©, a new software package that provides advanced modeling, graphical and network capabilities to provide shareable models with engaging visual interfaces for decision makers

Toward a Theory of Emergent Leadership for Collaborative Information Systems Development among Social Enterprises

Many social enterprises (SEs) are adopting collaborative strategies to overcome fragmentation and duplication in the socialsector to effectively address the world’s social needs (i.e. hunger, poverty, healthcare, education). SEs are increasinglyutilizing IT to support collaboration. However, historically SEs have been slow to integrate IT into their organizations solittle is known about information systems design (ISD) in SEs; even less at the collaborative level. Effective leadership inISD is important to realizing desired outcomes. Current leadership theories do not translate easily to the SE context. Weexplore the collective leadership, emerging from the collaborative ISD process itself, as being relevant to SE contexts. Weapply the neohumanist philosophy, and incorporate Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, to develop a theory ofleadership in collaborative SE ISD, in which leadership emerges from communicative actions in the ISD process. We offer aframework for leadership in collaborative ISD in social sector collaboration

IT and Agility in the Social Enterprise: A Case Study of St Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s “Cure4Kids” IT-Platform for International Outreach

The agility literature suggests a positive relationship between IT-investments, agility, and performance for firms operating in turbulent contexts. However, agility studies have primarily focused on conceptual concerns, leaving these relationships empirically unexplored. In addition, the literature has focused on for-profit firms operating in commercial markets, thereby leaving other important organizational types unexamined; one such type is the social enterprise (SE). SEs are entrepreneurial organizations with a mission to improve complex social challenges (i.e., healthcare, hunger, education, etc) rather than profit maximization. This void leaves SEs in the dark as to how they can leverage IT to become more agile and improve performance. We draw on the agility perspective to examine how one exemplary SE operating in the context of pediatric global health utilized IT to enhance its agility and improve performance. We identify how the SE’s IT-investment decisions resulted in an IT platform that facilitated increased agility in launching new products aimed at improving survival rates of children. Specifically, we analyze how the SE’s IT platform positively impacted customer, partnering, and operational agility, and demonstrate how this led to dramatic improvements in performance. Finally, we offer evidence to support positive relationships between IT, agility, and performance in social sector contexts

MIS-aligned Student Perspectives of Outsourcing and Offshoring

Outsourcing and offshoring (sourcing) aspects of IS functions have been common organizational activities for decades.However, the landscape is evolving. Organizations are shifting from primarily single vendor-client sourcing relationshipstoward innovative multi-vendor relationships integrated into organizational strategic plans. Current students are tomorrow’sleaders, and as such it is critical that IS programs teach cutting edge strategic sourcing concepts. We analyzed studentperceptions of the pros and cons of sourcing and found that current students largely anchor to a limited number of conceptsthat may be outdated and not representative of today’s competitive sourcing landscape. Current organizational trends insourcing require a different skill set for IS managers than those required in the past. More must be done to inform students ofcurrent trends in order to prepare them for the skills needed to be effective in their future IS roles. A framework of requiredskills for future IS managers is offered

Inquiring Decision Systems: A Churchmanian Approach to Ethical Decision Making

Many business organizations seem to be doing everything but making ethical organizational decisions these days. In stark contrast, social enterprises are organizations that operate as businesses but are altruistic, humanitarian, and seek the goal of creating social value in effective, efficient and ethical ways. This paper applies principles of social enterprises to develop a multi-perspective framework for ethical business decision-making within a philosophical context provided by C. West Churchman’s inquiring systems in organizations

Philosophical Foundations of Information Systems: A Review of the First 10 Years

This paper updates and extends the work by Bunker, et al. (2004) that reviewed developments in the Philosophical Foundations of IS (PFIS) mini-track from 1996 through 2003. We first describe the history of the mini-track, concentrating on 1996, when C. West Churchman served on a PFIS panel and presented a luncheon address. His work on inquiring systems continues to be the basis for many of the papers in the mini-track. Papers in 2004 and 2005 are reviewed briefly and some trends and themes are noted. Unfortunately, one trend is a declining number of papers submitted. We discuss factors that may have led to this and hope that next year’s conference venue may lead to an increase in submissions. For convenience, the chronology published in Bunker, et al.’s 2004 paper is included as an appendix