SNA as an Attractor in Emergent Networks of Research Groups

While many progressive enterprises are becoming more network-centric, many research-oriented organisations retain a traditional hierarchy with an ego-centric culture. Paradoxically, network-centrism is associated with technology, innovation and creativity, the hallmarks of cutting-edge research. Using concepts of emergence from complexity theory, this study takes a developmental, action research approach to the application of social network analysis in legitimising a network of research groups in a traditionally managed institution. The results indicate that an emergent network is as valid an organisational structure as an imposed hierarchy for research management. The study also demonstrates the use of social network analysis and similar technological applications in democratising organisational decision-making in respective of group innovation

Barriers to Adoption of Financial Technology: A Study of the Australian Financial Sector

The Australian Financial sector is the largest contributor to Australian GDP and represents the 4th largest pool of investible wealth in the world and the largest in Asia. Traditional businesses in the sector are under pressure from direct competitors and under potential threat from powerful global technology-based platforms. However, the rate of adoption of innovative Financial Technology by the Financial sector has been saliently low and has potentially serious adverse impacts on the sector, individual Australians and Australia’s country competitive advantage. Despite the sector’s importance, there is a paucity of Australian-specific research into Board decision making in the Financial sector regarding adoption of innovative technology. The purpose of this Research-in-Progress paper is to explore and establish, using a mixed methods research methodology, what are the barriers to adoption of Financial Technology by public entities in the Australian Financial sector

Healthcare 4.0: Trends, Challenges and Benefits

The Fourth Industry Revolution, known as Industry 4.0, refers to the forces that are transforming industry, including the healthcare industry, where it has been termed Healthcare 4.0. Though lagging other industries in the adoption of new innovative technologies, the healthcare industry is embracing the potential benefits that arise from new innovative technologies. New trends revealed both in the academic literature and by industry practice show that researchers and practitioners are becoming more aware of the benefits technology can bring to an industry as complex as the healthcare industry. The object of the study is to identify the challenges, trends and gaps in the existing body of research with regard to Healthcare 4.0. In this study, a systematic literature review on Healthcare 4.0 research papers was conducted to identify trends, challenges and the perceived benefits that may arise from it. This paper found that there is a need to conduct more empirical studies in this area. It, further, identified the need to implement practical procedures in the industry to get feedback from patients and healthcare participants in order to promote the adoption of new Healthcare 4.0 technologie

Researching the virtual: A framework for reflexivity in qualitative social media research

Recent years have seen an explosion in social media in our everyday lives, and a corresponding increase in social media research in IS. As social media researchers, we are intrigued by the problem of virtuality and context in social media research, and how we might apply reflexive research principles to such settings. In social media, the absence of a setting's real physical boundaries (to a large extent) limits participants' ability to create a common experience at the present time and develop a history of shared experiences. As a result, we would contend that many social media researchers' interpretations of data in social media settings are often black‐boxed. In this paper, we argue that many of the challenges concerned with social media settings, by nature, are emergent and linked to their virtual and contextual features. We use the Klein and Myers (1999) framework for traditional interpretive field studies as a vehicle for unpacking these challenges. We contend that these challenges may remain unnoticed if researchers do not actively reflect upon their impact on the research process. In this paper, we present a framework for social media research, considering social media research as a reflexive space, building on the notion of three levels of reflexivity: theory, design and practice. Finally, we discuss some implications of reflexivity for qualitative social media research in IS

Methodological implications of Social Media as a research setting for IS healthcare studies: Reflections from an interpretative case study

Over the last decade, social media environments have increasingly become an attractive research setting for Information Systems researchers. However, the methodological implications of this research setting for IS studies, are still not fully understood. In this paper we develop and present a framework to reflect on a recent qualitative healthcare IS study that uses social media as a research setting. We argue that using social media as a research setting in qualitative IS studies can have implications for the contextualisation of the study (implications for the research paradigm), defining research setting (implications for research design), theoretical sampling (implications for data collection and data analysis), and research ethics (implications for research design). With the popularity and growth of social media as a research setting in healthcare IS studies, we conclude by calling for an extensive re-examination of methodological practices to meet the challenge of researching of social media settings in healthcare