The Relationship between IT and Organizations: Review of Theoretical Perspectives over Half a Century

Without being exhaustive, this study reviews important theoretical perspectives used by information system (IS) researchersto study the influence of information technology (IT) on organizations and their members in the last five decades. Weillustrate these theoretical perspectives by selecting and describing exemplars published in each decade and explain theirimplications for researchers and practitioners. Our results show that in each of the last five decades, a new theoreticalperspective was developed and adopted to extend the previous decade’s rhetoric by getting further away from technologicaldeterminism in the sixties and closer to more balanced causal arguments explaining the consequences of IT on organizationsand their members. Our analysis suggests important implications such as the need for IS researchers to restore theoreticalattention to material IT artifacts in IS research and potential approaches that can be used to achieve this goal

Investigating the Relationship between IT and Organizations: A Research Trilogy

The overall objective of this dissertation is to contribute to knowledge and theory about the influence of information technology (IT) on organizations and their members. This dissertation is composed of three related studies, each examining different aspects of the relationship between IT and organizations. The objective of the first study is to provide an overview of the dominant theoretical perspectives that IS researchers have used in the last five decades to study the influence of technology on organizations and their members. Without being exhaustive, this study seeks more specifically to identify, for each decade, the dominant theoretical perspectives used in the IS field. These dominant theoretical perspectives are illustrated by the selection and description of exemplars published in the decade and their implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. This review is useful not only for understanding past trends and the current state of research in this area but also to foresee its future directions and guide researchers in their future research on the influence of IT on organizations and their members. The objective of the second study is to theorize how IT artifacts influence the design and performance of organizational routines. This study adopts organizational routines theory as its theoretical lens. Organizational routines represent an important part of almost every organization and organizational routines theory is an influential theory that explains how the accomplishment of organizational routines can contribute to both organizational stability and change. However, the current form of this theory has several limitations such as its neglect of the material aspect of artifacts and the distinctive characteristics of IT artifacts, and its treatment of artifacts as outside of organizational routines. This study seeks to overcome these limitations by extending organizational routines theory. The objective of the third study is to develop a better understanding of information security standards by analyzing the structure, nature and content of their controls. This study investigates also the mechanisms used in the design of information security standards to make them both applicable to a wide range of organizations and adaptable to various specific organizational settings. The results of this study led to the proposition of a new theory for information systems called generative control theory

Adaptation to Work Processes Embedded in IS Packages: An Organizational Routines Perspective

Although the adoption of information system (IS) packages offers many benefits over the development of custom-made IS, organizations often face severe difficulties in their adaptation to work processes embedded in the product and get unexpected and undesirable effects such as a decrease in IS post-adoption usage. By adopting organizational routines theory as its theoretical lens for interpreting results, this qualitative study’s goal is to better understand this adaptation process and how it relates to IS post-adoption behavior. This proposed dissertation should contribute to IS theory and practice by providing insights on: the effects of possible misfits between IS packages designed for large business organizations yet applied within less conventional organizations, the organizations’ internal dynamics as they adapt to work processes embedded in IS packages and their influence on IS package post-adoption behavior, and the role of technology’s material properties in organizational change and organizational routines

Farmland Allocation along the Rural-Urban Gradient: The Impacts of Urbanization and Urban Sprawl

In the vicinity of a city, farmers are confronted with increasing agricultural land prices and rents along the rural-urban gradient, but they concurrently enjoy the advantages associated with proximity to a larger and wealthier consumer base. We hypothesize that farmers transition from low-value, land-intensive \traditional" crops to high-value, labor-intensive \specialized" crops on parcels located closer to urban centers. Once returns to development of a parcel exceed the profits associated with farming, exurban farmers may sell their land for conversion to urban use. Urban pressure in the rural-urban fringe intensifies as cities expand. We differentiate between a gradual process of urban growth (or urbanization) and urban sprawl. Utilizing farmland fragmentation measures as indicators of sprawl, we hypothesize that urban sprawl burdens \traditional" farms to the extent that they accelerate the transition to specialized crops or convert farmland to urban use. We use crop-specific land cover data at the level of grid cells and a state-of-the-art system of spatially correlated simultaneous equations with data for the metropolitan area of Indianapolis, IN and its immediate hinterland. Our initial empirical results corroborate that accelerated urban development around Indianapolis in the 1990s is associated with land uses characterized by fewer field crops and more idle land.land use, urban sprawl, agriculture, specialized crops, spatial econometrics, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Land Economics/Use, C31, O13, Q15, R14,

Acute kidney injury in critically ill cancer patients : an update

Patients with cancer represent a growing group among actual ICU admissions (up to 20 %). Due to their increased susceptibility to infectious and noninfectious complications related to the underlying cancer itself or its treatment, these patients frequently develop acute kidney injury (AKI). A wide variety of definitions for AKI are still used in the cancer literature, despite existing guidelines on definitions and staging of AKI. Alternative diagnostic investigations such as Cystatin C and urinary biomarkers are discussed briefly. This review summarizes the literature between 2010 and 2015 on epidemiology and prognosis of AKI in this population. Overall, the causes of AKI in the setting of malignancy are similar to those in other clinical settings, including preexisting chronic kidney disease. In addition, nephrotoxicity induced by the anticancer treatments including the more recently introduced targeted therapies is increasingly observed. However, data are sometimes difficult to interpret because they are often presented from the oncological rather than from the nephrological point of view. Because the development of the acute tumor lysis syndrome is one of the major causes of AKI in patients with a high tumor burden or a high cell turnover, the diagnosis, risk factors, and preventive measures of the syndrome will be discussed. Finally, we will briefly discuss renal replacement therapy modalities and the emergence of chronic kidney disease in the growing subgroup of critically ill post-AKI survivors

Born in the USA: Exceptionalism in Maternity Care Organisation Among High-Income Countries

In lay terms, childbirth is regarded as a purely biological event: what is more natural than birth and death? On the other hand, social scientists have long understood that \'natural\' events are socially structured. In the case of birth, sociologists have examined the social and cultural shaping of its timing, outcome, and the organization of care throughout the perinatal period. Continuing in this tradition, we examine the peculiar social design of birth in the United States of America, contrasting this design with the ways birth is organised in Europe. We begin by showing how several key characteristics of the US health care system – including its inherent social inequality, its high level of medicalisation, and the substantial influence of private medical practice and insurance companies – influence the organization of maternity care there. We then explore how cultural characteristics of American society – its emphasis on individuality, the influence of moral conservatism in US politics, and the ease with which ordinary people take court action (the so-called \'litigation culture\') – shape the delivery of care at birth. We conclude with a consideration of the implications of US maternity care exceptionalism for comparative sociological analysis.Pregnancy, Comparative Studies, Exceptionalism, United States, Midwifery, Maternity Care, Birth

Information Technology, Materiality, and Organizational Change: A Professional Odyssey

We begin with a retrospective reflection on the first author’s research career, which in large part is devoted to research about the implications of information technology (IT) for organizational change. Although IT has long been associated with organizational change, our historical review of the treatment of technology in organization theory demonstrates how easily the material aspects of organizations can disappear into the backwaters of theory development. This is an unfortunate result since the material characteristics of IT initiatives distinguish them from other organizational change initiatives. Our aim is to restore materiality to studies of IT impact by tracing the reasons for its disappearance and by offering options in which IT’s materiality plays a more central theoretical role. We adopt a socio-technical perspective that differs from a strict sociomaterial perspective insofar as we wish to preserve the ontological distinction between material artifacts and their social context of use. Our analysis proceeds using the concept of “affordance” as a relational concept consistent with the socio-technical perspective. We then propose extensions of organizational routines theory that incorporate material artifacts in the generative system known as routines. These contributions exemplify two of the many challenges inherent in adopting materiality as a new research focus in the study of IT’s organizational impacts

Anharmonicity and asymmetry of Landau levels for a two-dimensional electron gas

We calculate the density of states of a two dimensional electron gas located at the interface of a GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction. The disorder potential which is generally created by a single doping layer behind a spacer, is here enhanced by the presence of a second delta doped layer of scatterers which can be repulsive or attractive impurities. We have calculated the density of states by means of the Klauder's approximation, in the presence of a magnetic field of arbitrary strength. At low field either band tails or impurity bands are observed for attractive potentials, depending on the impurity concentration. At higher field, impurity bands are observed for both repulsive and attractive potentials. We discuss the effect of such an asymmetrical density of states on the transport properties in the quantum Hall effect regime.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures. submitted to Phys. Rev.

Travail pendant les études et abandon scolaire : Causes, conséquences et politiques d'intervention

The deterioration of the wage conditions of non-qualified workers has been the subject of considerable attention over the past few years. Unfortunately, it is not the sole preoccupation of public decision-makers. In this class of workers, the employment rate is particularly low, while unemployment tends to remain rather high. The first cause of non-qualification of young workers being their dropping out of school (the Canadian rate of dropouts from high school is 18%), any policy likely to reduce the dropout rates will be an effective means of improving the working situation of the youth. Our research identifies several determinants of dropping out and different policies which can be put into action by the governments in order to reduce dropout. We mention particularly the role played by the minimum wage in the dropout phenomenon: it is clear that a high minimum wage tends to increase dropout significantly La détérioration des conditions salariales des travailleurs non qualifiés sur le marché du travail a été l'objet d'une attention considérable au cours des dernières années. Malheureusement, elle n'est pas la seule source de préoccupations pour les décideurs publics. S'agissant de cette catégorie de travailleurs, le ratio emploi/population demeure singulièrement bas et le taux de chômage se0501ntient à des niveaux le plus souvent élevés. La première source de la non qualification des jeunes travailleurs étant l'abandon des études secondaires (à l'échelle canadienne, le taux d'abandon au secondaire est estimé à 18 %), toute politique susceptible de réduire les taux d'abandon représentera un moyen efficace d'améliorer la situation des jeunes sur le marché du travail. Notre recherche identifie plusieurs déterminants de l'abandon et différentes politiques qui pourront être mises de l'avant par les gouvernements pour réduire l'abandon scolaire. En particulier, mentionnons le rôle du salaire minimum dans le phénomène du décrochage : il est clair que le salaire minimum, quand il est élevé, contribue de façon significative à accroître l'abandon scolaire.School dropout, hours of work during study, minimum wage, Abandon scolaire, heures travaillées pendant les études, salaire minimum