Successful System-use: It’s not just who you are, but what you do

Information and communication technologies are so embedded in modern society that we have arrived at the point at which learning to use technology successfully may affect our day to day lives as much as does learning to eat or exercise properly. While information systems scholars have studied interesting post-adoption constructs such as continuance intentions and IT-appropriation, research explaining and predicting successful system-use (i.e., system-use that adds value) has been scarce. A better understanding of successful system-use would benefit both research and practice – scholars’ knowledge of positive outcomes of human-computer interactions would expand and practitioners could gain insights toward improving employee added-value system-use. We pursue this study by theorizing around user characteristics, adaptive behaviors, and system-use outcomes. Our findings suggest that it is not only who you are, but what you do, that drives successful system-use

Leveraging Multimedia to Advance Science by Disseminating a Greater Variety of Scholarly Contributions in More Accessible Formats

For the welfare of the scientific community, we intentionally “rock the boat” about the way we conduct, recognize, and disseminate scholarly contributions. As a scientific community, we are doing ourselves a great disservice by ignoring the insights, artifacts, discoveries, and conversations that naturally occur in the scientific process of advancing knowledge that do not fit into the narrowly defined form of print-style papers. By failing to recognize, reward, and publish the wide variety of scholarly contributions that do not suit print-style papers, we hinder scientific progress, devalue important and necessary contributions to science, and demotivate these types of vital contributions. Although over three centuries of scientific publishing has demonstrated the effectiveness of the print medium for conveying scholarly knowledge, the print-style paper captures only a single form of scholarly contribution in a highly limited media format. Unfortunately, the current tenure and promotion process recognizes only this one form of scientific contribution. As a result, science at large advances inevitably only by this single type of contribution. Given the radical advances in audiovisual technologies, storage and bandwidth capacities, public virtual infrastructure, and global acceptance of user-generated open content, the time is ripe to exploit the possibility of publishing more forms of scholarly contributions in a publicly available multimedia format (e.g., video). In this paper, we examine the feasibility of this proposal, develop a model to demonstrate the sustainability of this approach, and discuss potential limitations

Proposing the Multimotive Information Systems Continuance Model (MISC) to Better Explain End-User System Evaluations and Continuance Intentions

To ensure that users want to continue using a system, information system designers must consider the influence of users’ intrinsic motivations in addition to commonly studied extrinsic motivations. In an attempt to address this need, several studies have extended models of extrinsic motivation to include intrinsic variables. However, these studies largely downplay the role of users’ intrinsic motivations in predicting system use and how this role differs from that of extrinsic motivation. The role of met and unmet expectations related to system use is often excluded from extant models, and their function as cocreators in user evaluations has not been sufficiently explained. Even though expectations are a firmly established consequence of motivations and an antecedent of interaction evaluations, this area remains understudied. Our paper addresses these gaps by developing and testing a comprehensive model—the multimotive information systems continuance model (MISC)—that (1) explains more accurately and thoroughly the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, (2) explains how the fulfillment of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations affects systems-use outcome variables differently through met expectations, and (3) accounts for the effects of key design constructs

The roles of supervisory support and involvement in influencing scientists’ job satisfaction to ensure the achievement of SDGs in academic organizations

Job satisfaction is the focus of this study, given its strategic importance, both to generate differentiation and competitive advantages, and to promote better and more sustainable results in organizations. Guided by the Affective Events Theory (AET), the interest is in analyzing the direct and indirect effects of supervisory support and involvement on job satisfaction and highlighting the implications of the academics’ emotions for sustainability-related policies and practices in academic environments. The context selected is the higher education (HE) sector in Malaysia for science disciplines, due to its socio- economic relevance and its direct link to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4), as well as to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A sample of 579 scientists were selected randomly and the analysis was carried out based on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methodology. Our results supported the hypotheses postulated in the study and especially highlighted the effects of supervisory support and positive affect on job satisfaction, as well as the effect of interpersonal conflict on negative affect. In terms of implications, policy makers at ministry level are advised to consider introducing directives which promote a climate of emotional safety and trust in academic institutions, to achieve the SDGs more effectively and efficiently. At the university level, and given the relevance of the observed effects, academic leaders are recommended to contemplate improving university environments in some way that reduces levels of negative work events (interpersonal conflict in our case). This is crucial as the negative work events can trigger negative emotions, which in turn cause scientists’ job dissatisfaction.Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia FRGS/1/2019/SS05/USM/02/

The Effects of Team Flow on Performance: A Video Game Experiment

Research on effective team work has traditionally explained team performance as a result of team cohesion and goal commitment. Team cohesion was originally defined as the general level of attraction the team members had to all others in their group. This social relations-based concept of team cohesion is generally a strong indicator of team performance. However, more recent research has stressed the importance of incorporating the team members’ mutual level of commitment to the team task as another sub-dimension of cohesion. When including task commitment, team cohesion is a somewhat weaker predictor of team performance (Beal et al., 2003). To better conceptualize the role of the task engagement and to explain team performance, we incorporate a variable more relevant to the characteristics of a team task: team flow. The concept of “flow” has been well researched and theorized at the individual level. However, in an experiment based on collaborative video gaming, we demonstrate that not only can flow be extended to the team level to better explain performance, but that teams can quickly generate a psychological flow state from low cost treatments like collaborative video gaming which can also be effectively transferred into subsequent work tasks

Taking “Fun and Games” Seriously: Proposing the Hedonic-Motivation System Adoption Model (HMSAM)

Hedonic-motivation systems (HMS)—systems used primarily to fulfill users’ intrinsic motivations—are the elephant in the room for IS research. Growth in HMS sales has outperformed utilitarian-motivation systems (UMS) sales for more than a decade, generating billions in revenue annually; yet IS research focuses mostly on UMS. In this study, we explain the role of intrinsic motivations in systems use and propose the hedonic-motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) to improve the understanding of HMS adoption. Instead of a minor, general TAM extension, HMSAM is an HMS-specific system acceptance model based on an alternative theoretical perspective, which is in turn grounded in flow-based cognitive absorption (CA). The HMSAM extends van der Heijden’s (2004) model of hedonic system adoption by including CA as a key mediator of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and of behavioral intentions to use (BIU) hedonic-motivation systems. Results from experiments involving 665 participants confirm that, in a hedonic context, CA is a more powerful and appropriate predictor of BIU than PEOU or joy, and that the effect of PEOU on BIU is fully mediated by CA sub-constructs. This study lays a foundation, provides guidance, and opens up avenues for future HMS, UMS, and mixed-motivation system research

Educational Disruption & Rising Faculty Expectations

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the landscape of higher education had been primed for upheaval. The pandemic has only accentuated the need for change. Not only have we had to scramble to provide meaningful and valuable content to our students; we have also had to reinvent how that content is delivered. Beyond these changes that have abruptly affected all of us, expectations from students, colleagues, and administrators have unilaterally risen. We are expected to publish more, and in better journals. We are expected to provide more service, internally and externally. We are expected to get better teacher evaluations from students, and to deliver up-to-date content in a way that can convince students that they are benefiting from their paid education more than they would by taking online courses (often for free). The pressure to succeed on all fronts has never been higher. In this panel discussion, seasoned scholars, who have succeeded, will share insights from their experiences navigating this new landscape and reinventing their own mindset and work habits to accommodate the increasing expectations placed on faculty. Each panelist will take the position of a key stakeholder in high education including university leaders, society, the business community, journal editors and students

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures. Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities. HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR. These capabilities allow for a broad suite of compelling science that cuts across the entire NASA astrophysics portfolio. HabEx has three primary science goals: (1) Seek out nearby worlds and explore their habitability; (2) Map out nearby planetary systems and understand the diversity of the worlds they contain; (3) Enable new explorations of astrophysical systems from our own solar system to external galaxies by extending our reach in the UV through near-IR. This Great Observatory science will be selected through a competed GO program, and will account for about 50% of the HabEx primary mission. The preferred HabEx architecture is a 4m, monolithic, off-axis telescope that is diffraction-limited at 0.4 microns and is in an L2 orbit. HabEx employs two starlight suppression systems: a coronagraph and a starshade, each with their own dedicated instrument

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures. Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities. HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR. These capabilities allow for a broad suite of compelling science that cuts across the entire NASA astrophysics portfolio. HabEx has three primary science goals: (1) Seek out nearby worlds and explore their habitability; (2) Map out nearby planetary systems and understand the diversity of the worlds they contain; (3) Enable new explorations of astrophysical systems from our own solar system to external galaxies by extending our reach in the UV through near-IR. This Great Observatory science will be selected through a competed GO program, and will account for about 50% of the HabEx primary mission. The preferred HabEx architecture is a 4m, monolithic, off-axis telescope that is diffraction-limited at 0.4 microns and is in an L2 orbit. HabEx employs two starlight suppression systems: a coronagraph and a starshade, each with their own dedicated instrument.Comment: Full report: 498 pages. Executive Summary: 14 pages. More information about HabEx can be found here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex

Hospital admission and emergency care attendance risk for SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) compared with alpha (B.1.1.7) variants of concern: a cohort study

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant was first detected in England in March, 2021. It has since rapidly become the predominant lineage, owing to high transmissibility. It is suspected that the delta variant is associated with more severe disease than the previously dominant alpha (B.1.1.7) variant. We aimed to characterise the severity of the delta variant compared with the alpha variant by determining the relative risk of hospital attendance outcomes. Methods: This cohort study was done among all patients with COVID-19 in England between March 29 and May 23, 2021, who were identified as being infected with either the alpha or delta SARS-CoV-2 variant through whole-genome sequencing. Individual-level data on these patients were linked to routine health-care datasets on vaccination, emergency care attendance, hospital admission, and mortality (data from Public Health England's Second Generation Surveillance System and COVID-19-associated deaths dataset; the National Immunisation Management System; and NHS Digital Secondary Uses Services and Emergency Care Data Set). The risk for hospital admission and emergency care attendance were compared between patients with sequencing-confirmed delta and alpha variants for the whole cohort and by vaccination status subgroups. Stratified Cox regression was used to adjust for age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation, recent international travel, area of residence, calendar week, and vaccination status. Findings: Individual-level data on 43 338 COVID-19-positive patients (8682 with the delta variant, 34 656 with the alpha variant; median age 31 years [IQR 17–43]) were included in our analysis. 196 (2·3%) patients with the delta variant versus 764 (2·2%) patients with the alpha variant were admitted to hospital within 14 days after the specimen was taken (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 2·26 [95% CI 1·32–3·89]). 498 (5·7%) patients with the delta variant versus 1448 (4·2%) patients with the alpha variant were admitted to hospital or attended emergency care within 14 days (adjusted HR 1·45 [1·08–1·95]). Most patients were unvaccinated (32 078 [74·0%] across both groups). The HRs for vaccinated patients with the delta variant versus the alpha variant (adjusted HR for hospital admission 1·94 [95% CI 0·47–8·05] and for hospital admission or emergency care attendance 1·58 [0·69–3·61]) were similar to the HRs for unvaccinated patients (2·32 [1·29–4·16] and 1·43 [1·04–1·97]; p=0·82 for both) but the precision for the vaccinated subgroup was low. Interpretation: This large national study found a higher hospital admission or emergency care attendance risk for patients with COVID-19 infected with the delta variant compared with the alpha variant. Results suggest that outbreaks of the delta variant in unvaccinated populations might lead to a greater burden on health-care services than the alpha variant. Funding: Medical Research Council; UK Research and Innovation; Department of Health and Social Care; and National Institute for Health Research