How do Organizations react to Unintended Affordances? An Ethnography in Healthcare

When organizations implement information technology (IT) artifacts, they focus on intended functionalities. Misalignment between processes and organizational or individual goals can lead to unintended work practices. Users may actualize affordances that the artifact designer did not intend. As such, there is a potential tension between the goals users must achieve, the technology\u27s features and the organization\u27s policies. Organizations must respond to unintended affordances in regulated industries such as healthcare to ensure compliance. Understanding how organizations react to unintended affordances provides insights into individual and organizational behavior concerning the adoption and assimilation of IT artifacts. Organizations need guidance on responding to unintended affordances in specific situations. Therefore, this real-world ethnographical study seeks to identify organizational reactions to unintended affordances

The Fear of Losing Control - What Prevents the Automation of Business Processes in Sensitive Areas

This article explores the potential barriers and drivers of end-user adoption of robotic process automation (RPA) technology in particularly sensitive process areas. For this purpose, the grounded theory method was used within a health authority to determine which factors influence the intention to use and the benefits of such solutions. RPA enables the automation of repetitive and rule-based processes. The development and usage experiences of the respective employees as users of the technology were recorded and used for conceptualization. These found constructs were then compared with those from the established scientific literature. The results show that the obvious drivers can be described in terms of "transparency" and "explainability" and that these are novelty factors compared to established RPA-specific success factors from the relevant literature

Influencing Factors on IT Affordances: A Qualitative Study

Individuals using the same IT artifacts still differ in their adoption and use behavior on an affordance level, but goal variations cannot fully explain these differences. These differences could, for example, be caused by factors inhibiting affordance perception and actualization, thus impeding individuals from gaining the most value from their IT artifacts. Understanding potential influences on affordance perception and actualization is therefore essential. Affordance theory allows us to examine adoption behavior more granularly - evolving from the binary adoption decision. However, research on the factors influencing affordance perception and actualization is still scarce. Therefore, we use a grounded theory approach to explore differences in how individuals perceive and actualize affordances. From the data, nine influencing factors on affordance perception and actualization emerged. With these insights, we improve IT adoption theories and offer practitioners the ability to design interventions encouraging the optimal use of IT artifacts

Robotic Process Flexibilization in the Term of Crisis: A Case Study of Robotic Process Automation in a Public Health Department

Due to the pandemic, institutions of the health sector, especially public health departments, are facing major challenges in managing their processes. In a constantly changing environment, new and existing processes have to be adopted or implemented in the shortest possible time, while the process volumes to be managed are constantly increasing. In our article, we use a case study to show how the concept of “flexibility by design” can be influenced by RPA in the sensitive environment of healthcare and how exactly flexibility in process execution can be achieved with it. As a result, we show that RPA can positively implement or enable three of the six realization options from the concept. In addition, the concept was supplemented by two aggregated theoretical dimensions, namely “Response” and “Range,” which summarize the supporting conditions for a process flexibilization with RPA. In the article, we thereby show how exactly RPA can complement existing processes in a healthcare environment and thus, serve to subsequently make rigid process models more flexible

Untersuchung des neuroprotektiven Potentials von Pycnogenol[R] anhand der Wirkung auf Mikrogliazellen

Die altersassoziierten neurodegenerativen Erkrankungen werden im Zuge des demografischen Wandels weiter zunehmen. Beim Idiopathischen Parkinson-Syndrom (IPS) kommt es in Folge einer Degeneration dopaminerger Neurone zu charakteristischen motorischen Symptomen; fakultativ können nichtmotorische Begleitsymptome auftreten. Bisher gibt es nur symptomatische Therapiemöglichkeiten. Da oxidativer Stress und Neuroinflammation maßgeblich an der Pathogenese des IPS beteiligt sind, kann der antiinflammatorisch und antioxidativ-wirksame, flavenoidreiche Kieferrindenextrakt Pycnogenol (PYC) eine Option zur Prävention und kausalen Therapie des IPS darstellen. Diese Arbeit untersucht die Wirkung von PYC in vitro auf etablierte, primäre Rattenmikroglia-Kulturen. Durch Stimulation mit LPS wurde die Mikroglia aktiviert und die inflammatorische Komponente des IPS experimentell rekonstruiert. Mittels MTT-Test konnten zytotoxische Effekte von PYC ausgeschlossen werden. Es kam zu einer gesteigerten Zellviabilität, als möglicher Hinweis auf eine Zellproliferation. Bei lichtmikroskopischer Begutachtung zeigten sich die Zellen vital. Weiterhin reduzierte PYC die mittels RT-qPCR bestimmte mRNA-Menge der entzündungsassoziierten Zytokine TNF-α, IL-6 und IL-1ß sowie der Enzyme MMP-9 und COX-2 in LPS-stimulierter Mikroglia nach 3, 6 und 24 Stunden signifikant. Gleichzeitig kam es für TNF-α zu einer Steigerung der mittels ELISA bestimmten Proteinfreisetzung. Für IL-6 ergab sich ein in Abhängigkeit von der Stimulationszeit unterschiedlicher Verlauf. Zudem steigerte PYC die LPS-induzierte NO-Freisetzung nach 6 und 24 Stunden scheinbar unabhängig von der iNOS, da es zu einer gleichzeitigen Abnahme der iNOS mRNA-Menge kam. PYC reduzierte die mittels Western-Blot-Analyse bestimmte Phosphorylierung von ERK und p38-Kinasen, welche an der Signaltransduktion im Rahmen entzündlicher Prozesse beteiligt sind. Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit weisen insgesamt auf ein neuroprotektives Potential von PYC hin

Study of the discharge gas trapping during thin film growth

Discharge gas trapping in thin films produced by sputtering is known to be due to high energy neutrals bouncing back from the cathode. Qualitatively, the phenomenon is enhanced by raising the discharge voltage and is strongly dependent on the atomic masses of the discharge gas and of the cathode material. In addition to these known effects it is shown that, for a given gas, the trapped amount decreases with increasing the melting temperature of the deposited material. The results obtained both by sample melting and laser ablation are presented and discussed