Contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services: An investigation in China

Copyright @ 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Reuse of this article has been approved by the publisher.In this paper, the authors explore the influences of two major contextual factors—supplier team members’ cultural understanding and trust relationship—on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services. The authors discuss a joint investigation conducted by a cross-cultural research team in China. Cultural understanding is measured by individualism with guanxi and mianzi, two Chinese cultural concepts, and trust relationship is measured by adjusting trust, a notion reflecting the uniqueness of the Chinese people. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing. Performance is measured by the outcomes of global sourcing, which is represented by product success and personal satisfaction. Data are collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers. The results of quantitative data analysis indicate that cultural understanding influences trust relationship greatly, as well as knowledge sharing and performance in global sourcing of IT services. Trust relationship significantly impacts knowledge sharing, whereas trust relationship and knowledge sharing have no impact on performance. This study suggests that special aspects of the Chinese context have significant direct impacts on knowledge processes while no direct and immediate impacts on performance in global sourcing of IT services.National Natural Science Foundation of China, Program for Humanity and Social Science Research, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University in China and Brunel University's Research Development Fund

Human-data interaction in healthcare

In this chapter, we focus on an emerging strand of IT-oriented research, namely Human-Data Interaction (HDI) and on how this can be applied to healthcare. HDI regards both how humans create and use data by means of interactive systems, which can both assist and constrain them and the operational level of data work, which is both work on data and by data. Healthcare is a challenging arena where to test the potential of HDI towards a new, user-centered perspective on how to support and assess “data work”. This is especially true in current times where data are becoming increasingly big and many tools are available for the lay people, including doctors and nurses, to interact with health-related data. This chapter is a contribution in the direction of considering health-related data through the lens of HDI, and of framing data visualization tools in this strand of research. The intended aim is to let the subtler peculiarities among different kind of data and of their use emerge and be addressed adequately. Our point is that doing so can promote the design of more usable tools that can support data work from a user-centered and data quality perspective and the evidence-based validation of these tools