Socio-technical analysis and design of digital workplaces to foster employee health

Recent socio-technical developments caused by ongoing digitalization (e.g., robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, anthropomorphic systems) or the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., an increasing number of remote working employees and hence, increasing number of virtual collaboration) change the work environment and culture. Digital and smart workplace technol-ogies facilitate business processes and provide tools for efficient communication and (virtual) collaboration, “increasing the productivity of the workforce in the information age” (Attaran et al. 2019, p. 1). Especially in times of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies play a crucial role in keeping us socially close, connected, and collaborative while increasing the phys-ical distance between humans. However, this development affects the health of employees (Tarafdar et al. 2013). In research, for example, it has long been known that the increased usage of digital technologies and media (DTM) may cause stress, leading to potentially harmful reac-tions in individuals. Research has noted this specific form of stress as technostress (Ayyagari et al. 2011; Tarafdar et al. 2007; Tarafdar et al. 2011; Tarafdar et al. 2019), which is an umbrella term for causes, negative organizational outcomes, and negative humanistic outcomes resulting from the use of DTM at work. The simultaneous consideration of humanistic (e.g., well-being, equality) and organizational outcomes (e.g., efficiency, productivity) is an integral part of a socio-technical system (Beath et al. 2013; Mumford 2006), which is at the core of the IS discipline (Bostrom et al. 2009; Chiasson and Davidson 2005). However, a review from Sarker et al. (2019) regarding published research articles in one of the top journals within the IS community revealed that most reviewed studies (91%) had focused exclusively on instrumental goals. They conclude that “many IS researchers have forgotten or ignored the premise that technologies need to benefit humankind overall (Majchrzak et al. 2016), not just their economic condition” (Sarker et al. 2019, p. 705). Especially as humanistic outcomes can lead to even more positive instrumental outcomes. Hence, Sarker et al. (2019) call for focusing on the connection between humanistic and instru-mental outcomes, enabling a positive synergy resulting from this interplay. For this reason, this dissertation adopts a socio-technical perspective. It aims to conduct re-search that links instrumental outcomes with humanistic objectives to ultimately achieve a healthier use of DTMs at the digital workplace. It is important to note that the socio-technical perspective considers both the technical component and the social component privileging nei-ther one of them and sees outcomes resulting from the reciprocal interaction between those two.Therefore, the dissertation focuses on the interaction while applying pluralistic methodological approaches from qualitative (e.g., semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions) and quantitative research (e.g., collection from a field study or survey research). It provides a theo-retical contribution applying both behavioral research (i.e., analysis of cause-and-effect rela-tionships) and design-oriented research (i.e., instructions for designing socio-technical information systems). Overall, this work addresses four different areas within the reciprocal interaction between the social and technical components: the role of the technical component, the role of the social component, DTMs fostering a fit between the technical and social compo-nents, and the imminent misfit between these two due to ongoing digitalization. First, to contribute to an understanding of the technical component’s role, this thesis presents new knowledge on the characteristics and features of DTM and their influence on employee health and productivity. Research on the design of digital workplaces examined different design approaches, in which information exchange and sharing documents or project support were regarded (Williams and Schubert 2018). However, the characteristics of DTM also play an es-sential role in the emergence of technostress (Dardas and Ahmad 2015). This thesis presents ten characteristics of DTM that affect technostress at an individual’s workplace, including a measurement scale and analysis on how these characteristics affect technostress. Besides, also, the provision of functional features by DTMs can affect instrumental outcomes or humanistic objectives. For example, affording users with certain kinds of autonomy regarding the config-uration of DTM while they work towards their goals could have a tremendous effect on pursu-ing goals and well-being (Patall et al. 2008; Ryan and Deci 2000). Therefore, this thesis presents knowledge regarding the design of DTM on the benefits of affording users with autonomy. Furthermore, it shows that merely affording more autonomy can have positive effects above and beyond the positive effects of the actualization of affordance. Second, to contribute to an understanding of the social component’s role, this thesis presents new knowledge on contextual and individual factors of social circumstances and their influence on employee health and productivity. In this context, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the intensity of technostress among employees is considered, as work became more digital almost overnight. Therefore, this thesis provides empirical insights into digital work and its context in times of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on employees’ well-being, health, and productivity. Furthermore, measures to steer the identified effects if the situation in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic persists or comparable disruptive situations should re-occur are discussed. On the other hand, this research takes a closer look at the effect of an individual preference regarding coping styles in dealing with upcoming technostress. A distinction is made between the effects of two different coping styles, namely active-functional and dysfunctional, on strain as a humanistic outcome and productivity as an instrumental outcome. In the course of this, evidence is provided that coping moderates the relationship between the misfit within the socio-technical system and strain as proposed by the psychological theory of job demands-resources model (Demerouti et al. 2001). Third, to contribute to a successful fit between the technical and social components, this thesis presents frameworks and guidelines on the design of DTM, which understand the social com-ponent (here the user and her/his environment) and adjust accordingly to the needs of their users. Therefore, the thesis provides knowledge on the design of DTMs that support users in applying stress management techniques and build the foundation for stress-sensitive systems (i.e., systems that aim to mitigate stress by applying intervention measures on the social and technical component (Adam et al. 2017)). As a matter of fact, a framework for collecting and storing data (e.g., on the user and her/his environment) is developed and experiences with im-plementing a prototype for life-integrated stress assessment are reported. The experiences from this and the existing knowledge in the literature will finally be aggregated to a mid-range design theory for mobile stress assessment. To contribute to the fourth and last aspect, the imminent misfit within the socio-technical sys-tem due to ongoing digitalization, this thesis presents new knowledge regarding digital work demands that potentially affect both employees’ health and instrumental outcomes. The current version of technostress’s theoretical foundation was introduced more than ten years ago by Tarafdar et al. (2007). However, the interaction with and use of DTM has considerably changed along with the societal and individual expectations. Therefore, this thesis puts the current con-cept of technostress to test. As a result, a new theory of digital stress, as an extension of the concept of technostress, is proposed with twelve dimensions – instead of five dimensions within the concept of Tarafdar et al. (2007) – that could be hierarchically structured in four higher-order factors. This theory holistically addresses the current challenges that employees have to deal with digitalization. To sum up, this dissertation contributes to the IS community’s knowledge base by providing knowledge regarding the interaction between employees and their digital workplace to foster the achievement of humanistic and instrumental outcomes. It provides both behavioral research and design-oriented research while using pluralistic methodological approaches. For this pur-pose, this thesis presents knowledge about the different components within the socio-technical system, design knowledge on DTMs fostering the fit between these components, and an under-standing of an upcoming misfit due to the ongoing digitalization. Overall, this research aims to support the successful change towards a healthy digital workplace in the face of digitalization

How to Conquer One’s Weaker Self: Do Autonomy Affordance Increase Goal Performance and Well-being?

Positive self-tracking technologies support users in conducting personal analytics and, hence, aim to foster their users’ goal attainment and well-being. A driver for these two is the experience of autonomy which can be afforded by self-tracking IS. In this paper, we examine the influence of autonomy affordance provided by self-tracking IS as well as their actualization on goal performance and well-being. For this purpose, empirical data was collected in a field experiment using a self-developed mobile self-tracking application. The results of a path analysis indicate that the mere provision of autonomy affordance is positively linked to well-being and that their actualization positively affects goal performance, in turn improving well-being. Contributing to design knowledge in positive computing and self-tracking IS as well as Affordance Theory, we find that the design of self-tracking IS should provide autonomy affordance to further both their users\u27 goal performance and well-being

myStress: Unobtrusive Smartphone-Based Stress Detection

Life is becoming increasingly stressful in many aspects, e.g., due to technology-induced stress and stress in organizational context. The assessment of stress experienced by individuals enables stress management and prevention with the long-term aim to avoid psychological and physiological harm from excessive stress. Commonly this assessment is performed through questionnaires on perceived stress or physiological measurements evaluating body reactions to stress. We explore a third assessment method: Our design science approach aims to unobtrusively assess perceived stress based on smartphone data while waiving additional devices and explicit user input. The presented design artefact, myStress, reads 36 hardware and software sensors to infer users’ perceived stress levels. A prototypical instantiation of myStress for the Android platform is distributed to test users. For evaluation purposes, the stress level additionally is determined by a questionnaire consisting of the Perceived Stress Scale. By analyzing data from test users, we gain first insights into the feasibility of unobtrusive, continuous stress assessment considering exclusively data from smartphone sensors. We find that several sensors seem to correlate with perceived stress, e.g., the frequency of switching the display on/off. For future research, behavioral and situational prevention measures can build on this method of unobtrusive stress assessment

Individuals\u27 Concerns Associated with Digital Healthcare: Professionals\u27 and Patients\u27 Hindrances to Adopt Digital Healthcare Services

Healthcare systems are facing enormous changes as digital technologies find their way to address current challenges. To foster acceptance of digital healthcare services in the future and support the digital transformation of healthcare, it is crucial to understand and overcome individuals’ concerns associated with the adoption of digital technologies. This paper presents eleven concerns structured along four categories deduced from an in-depth interview study with 26 healthcare professionals and patients. Further, we mapped these individual concerns as exogenous mechanisms on the well-established Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technologies (UTAUT) and discuss general implications for digital technology adoption in healthcare. Our paper is a first step towards addressing relevant concerns and can be used – either ex-ante or ex-post – to anticipate, explain, or evaluate problems with the adoption of digital healthcare services

TOWARDS A MATURITY MODEL: BED MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES IN HOSPITALS

As instrumental healthcare institutions providing high quality patient care, hospitals are currently facing multiple challenges ranging from pressure to reduce costs to a rapidly increasing elderly population. From a process perspective hospitals feature support and management processes, which enable the core process of providing patient care. One of the most crucial process areas – bed management – refers primarily to logistics processes related to the physical beds in hospitals. However, these are closely intertwined with diverse management and support processes (e.g., occupancy management). In order to conceptualize bed management as a process area from a holistic perspective, we develop a capability framework based on a thorough literature review as well as subsequent evaluation of the framework’s relevance, completeness, and practical applicability in two German hospitals. The capability framework includes 30 capabilities grouped into six overarching capability areas. It suggests that efficient and effective bed management is predicated on pooling organizational resources from various organizational units and functional areas. Our work serves as a foundation for the development of a respective maturity model. It enables practitioners to systematically manage capabilities related to bed management and supports them in deriving roadmaps, conducting fit/gap analyses, and prioritizing topics, while accounting for the hospital-specific context

How to prevent technostress at the digital workplace: a Delphi study

Technostress is a rising issue in the changing world of digital work. Technostress can cause severe adverse outcomes for individuals and organizations. Thus, organizations face the moral, legal, and economic responsibility to prevent employees’ excessive technostress. As technostress develops over time, it is crucial to prevent it throughout the process of its emergence instead of only reacting after adverse outcomes occur. Contextualizing the Theory of Preventive Stress management to technostress, we synthesize and advance existing knowledge on inhibiting technostress. We develop a set of 24 technostress prevention measures from technostress inhibitor literature, other technostress literature, and based on qualitative and quantitative contributions from a Delphi study. Based on expert feedback, we characterize each measure and, where possible, assess its relevance in addressing specific technostressors. Our paper contributes to research by transferring the Theory of Preventive Stress Management into the context of technostress and presenting specific measures to prevent technostress. This offers a complementary view to technostress inhibitors by expanding the theoretical grounding and adding a time perspective through the implementation of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention measures. For practice, we offer a comprehensive and applicable overview of measures organizations can implement to prevent technostress

Determination of the Fermion Pair Size in a Resonantly Interacting Superfluid

Fermionic superfluidity requires the formation of pairs. The actual size of these fermion pairs varies by orders of magnitude from the femtometer scale in neutron stars and nuclei to the micrometer range in conventional superconductors. Many properties of the superfluid depend on the pair size relative to the interparticle spacing. This is expressed in BCS-BEC crossover theories, describing the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) type superfluid of loosely bound and large Cooper pairs to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of tightly bound molecules. Such a crossover superfluid has been realized in ultracold atomic gases where high temperature superfluidity has been observed. The microscopic properties of the fermion pairs can be probed with radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy. Previous work was difficult to interpret due to strong and not well understood final state interactions. Here we realize a new superfluid spin mixture where such interactions have negligible influence and present fermion-pair dissociation spectra that reveal the underlying pairing correlations. This allows us to determine the spectroscopic pair size in the resonantly interacting gas to be 2.6(2)/kF (kF is the Fermi wave number). The pairs are therefore smaller than the interparticle spacing and the smallest pairs observed in fermionic superfluids. This finding highlights the importance of small fermion pairs for superfluidity at high critical temperatures. We have also identified transitions from fermion pairs into bound molecular states and into many-body bound states in the case of strong final state interactions.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures; Figures updated; New Figures added; Updated discussion of fit function

Patientenzentriertes Service Design für chronische Krankheiten: Vorstellen eines "Service Construction Set" – getestet anhand Multipler Sklerose [Abstract]

Einleitung: Chronische Krankheiten gehören weltweit zu den häufigsten Todesursachen und belasten das Leben der Erkrankten erheblich [1]. Innovative Ansätze digitaler Services (z.B. e-Health) könnten dabei helfen, die Versorgung chronisch Erkrankter zu verbessern. Diese Arbeit untersucht, wie digitale Services gestaltet werden müssen, um diesen Mehrwert zu schaffen. Hierfür wenden wir spezifisches Wissen aus den Bereichen Design Science Research (DSR) und Service Science auf Chronic Care an. Daraus entwickeln wir ein patientenzentriertes “Service Construction Set” (SCS), welches für Service Designer einen Entwicklungs- und Implementierungsprozess für digitale Services für chronisch kranke Patienten bereitstellt. Methoden: Die Forschungsmethode beruht auf dem “Build and Evaluate” Ansatz [2] aus der DSR. Zunächst wurde das theoretische SCS entwickelt (“build”), welches dann mit Multiple-Sklerose-Patienten (MS-Patienten) und Experten prototypisch getestet und evaluiert wurde (“evaluate”). Für die inhaltliche Entwicklung des SCS wurde eine Literaturrecherche (PubMed, Embase) mit Fokus auf „Chronic Care Management“ und „e-Health“ durchgeführt. Insgesamt wurden 285 Paper (Titel und Abstract) hinsichtlich ihrer Relevanz gesichtet. Es wurden 22 Paper als relevant und neuartig identifiziert, systematisch extrahiert und analysiert. Die Ergebnisse wurden anschließend konsolidiert in das SCS übergeführt. Die Anwendung des SCS wurde dann an dem Fall MS getestet. Die Arbeit verfolgt zwei Zielsetzungen: a) Erkenntnisse über die Verwendung des theoretischen SCS zu erhalten, und b) einen konkreten digitalen Service für MS-Patienten zu gestalten. Für die Gestaltung wurde der im SCS vorgestellte, iterative Prozess [3] durchlaufen. Es wurden Interviews mit Patienten und Experten geführt. Hierbei wurden der aktuelle Stand der Therapie und die Bedürfnisse der Patienten identifiziert, um darauf aufbauend digitale Servicelösungen zu entwickeln. Die (Teil-)Ergebnisse wurden wiederum durch Interviews evaluiert. Für die Auswertung der Interviews wurde die qualitative Inhaltsanalyse [4] verwendet. Ergebnisse: Insgesamt sind Ergebnisse aus 23 Interviews über einen Zeitraum von neun Monaten in die Gestaltung des digitalen Service für MS-Patienten mit eingeflossen (17 MS-Patienten, 2 Mediziner, 3 Physiotherapeuten und eine MS-Krankenschwester). Die Anwendung des SCS im Rahmen des Projekts “MS Bewegt” konnte Verbesserungspotenziale in folgenden Bereichen der Therapie identifizieren: Selbstmanagement der Krankheit, Wissensbereitstellung für Patienten, Patienten-Therapeuten-Kommunikation und soziale Unterstützung. Unerfüllte Bedürfnisse in den Bereichen sind z.B. Motivation für die Einhaltung des Therapieplans, Filtern von relevanten Informationen abgestimmt auf das individuelle Krankheitsbild, Bereitstellung der Gesundheitsdaten in verständlicher Form oder die regelmäßige Kontrolle durch professionelle Dritte. Darüber hinaus zeigt die erfolgreiche Anwendung des SCS am Fall MS, dass die zugrundeliegende, krankheitsunabhängige Designtheorie: (a) für chronische Krankheiten anwendbar ist, (b) einen transparenten, verständlichen Anwendungsprozess für Service Designer beinhaltet, und (c) zur Forschung im Bereich Service Design für chronische Krankheiten beiträgt. Diskussion: Die Arbeit hat gezeigt, dass das theoretische SCS in der Praxis angewendet werden kann und Service Designer bei der Gestaltung digitaler Services unterstützt. Für MS-Patienten hat sich eine ganzheitliche, digitale Plattform zur Patienten-Therapeuten-Kommunikation, sowie dem Selbst- und Wissensmanagement, als mehrwertschaffende Lösung herausgestellt. Theoretisch ließe sich ein ganzheitlicher Service designen, jedoch müssen bei der Umsetzung in Zukunft nicht nur technische, sondern auch finanzielle, rechtliche, soziale und ethische Hürden beachtet werden [5]. Im Rahmen des Projekts “MS Bewegt” werden daher zunächst (Teil-)Services entwickelt, die im aktuellen Gesundheitssystem implementiert werden können. Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht. Die Autoren geben an, dass kein Ethikvotum erforderlich ist

Sentinel-1 data to support monitoring deforestation in tropical humid forests

In recent years, methodologies for deforestation detection that use satellite data have been developed, primarily using optical data, which cannot detect deforestation in the presence of clouds. In this paper, we discuss a methodology developed to detect deforestation using Sentinel-1 data and that aims to complement typical early warning system based on optical satellite images such as one the Peruvian Government employs. The methodology was applied in three pilot areas in the tropical humid forest of Peru. Sentinel-1 data were acquired in Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) mode and VH polarization. We use a Gamma-Map filter to reduce the speckle noise, and the average of 3 chrono-sequentially continuous images to reduce the multi-temporal variation of the forest backscattering. This produced 6 time series for each pilot area. For the detection of deforestation, we used an algorithm based on the difference and ratio between the images before and after deforestation. The accuracy assessment revealed a user’s accuracy greater than 95%. We also made a multitemporal comparison between our results and the early warning tropical forest loss alerts that use only Landsat data, which showed that until the end of the study period 33.26% of the deforestation we detected was not detected by the early warning alerts that use Landsat data

Influências Edafoclimáticas, Hormonais e Nutricionais na Produção de Vacas Leiteiras em Lactação

Estudou-se a influência de fatores edafoclimáticos, hormonais e nutricionais na produção de vacas Holandesas em lactação. Fatores como ingestão de matéria seca, comportamento alimentar, requerimentos de nutrientes e água por parte dos animais, fatores ambientais e metabolismo da produção láctea foram estudados. Verificou-se que vacas em lactação são altamente susceptíveis a fatores externos quando se trata da produção de leite