IT-based Capabilities, Service Innovation, and Quality in Health Care

Rapid advancements in information technology (IT) and changing consumer requirements are forcing organizations to move from a product-based economy to a service-based economy. Tremendous opportunities await organizations that set themselves apart from their competition through service innovation. One industry which traditionally lags behind in the using IT to effectively deliver services is health care. Successful application of IT in health care could facilitate service innovation by creating new business models that redefine the traditional relationships between providers and patients. Increased data availability and transparency can bring data and process driven methods to improve health care service delivery. In this study, we examine theoretically and empirically the role of “service” in health care. Specifically, our research questions are: “what is the role of IT-based capabilities in health care facility performance?”, and “what roles do service innovation and quality play in mediating the relationship between IT-based capabilities and health care facility performance?

CORPORATE ECOLOGICAL RESPONSIVENESS, ENVIRONMENTAL AMBIDEXTERITY AND IT-ENABLED ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

An increased focus on creating a sustainable society has thrust environmental sustainability issues to societal and governmental forefront. Organizations can seize this opportunity to use environmental sustainability initiatives to set themselves apart from competitors. Achieving sustainability requires organizations to incorporate sustainability as part of their corporate strategy. A review of extant Information Systems (IS) literature on environmental sustainability revealed that the strategic role of Information Technology (IT) in enabling environmental sustainability strategy is one perspective that has not been explored in depth. Our paper addresses this gap in research. In this research paper, we propose that firms that use IT strategically to enable their environmental sustainability strategies and are able to demonstrate environmental ambidexterity are set to achieve competitive advantage, legitimacy, and reputation from their corporate ecological responsiveness initiatives. We present preliminary results from interviews that were part of our in-depth case study approach

SOCIALLY EXCHANGING PRIVACY FOR PLEASURE: HEDONIC USE OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED SOCIAL NETWORKS

Despite legitimate privacy concerns regarding their use, hundreds of millions of people still visit Facebook and other social network sites each day. This study proposes that the enjoyment derived from social interaction as mediated by social network sites provides incentive for individuals to ignore privacy concerns and act contrary to their best interests. This study draws from social exchange theory, which states that individuals engage in mutually beneficial social interactions. We propose that the enjoyment received from this social exchange is sufficient to override many privacy concerns. This reduction in privacy concerns decreases the likelihood of engaging in privacy protective response behavior, and may explain continued use of CMSN in the presence of legitimate user concerns over privacy

THE ROLE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) IN SERVICE INNOVATION: AN AMBIDEXTERITY PERSPECTIVE

Advancement in information and communication technologies has been a key driver of the transition from a goods-basedeconomy to a services-based economy where significant changes are occurring in the way that services are produced andconsumed. There is tremendous opportunity to realize business value from service innovation by using the knowledge aboutservices to develop and deliver new information services and business services. Organizations can seize this opportunity touse service innovation initiatives to set themselves apart from competitors. One of the means for organizations to achieveservice innovation is to incorporate business intelligence (BI) both at the strategic and operational levels. A review of extantIS literature on service innovation and BI revealed that the strategic and operational role of BI in fostering service innovationfrom an organizational ambidexterity perspective is one that has not been explored. We address this gap in research bydeveloping a theoretical model and hypotheses to examine the role of BI in service innovation. Our literature review revealedthat firms use BI strategically and operationally for exploration and exploitation respectively to create opportunities forservice innovations which have the potential to impact organizational performance

The role of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) media in patient empowerment: a "uses and gratifications" perspective

Empowerment has been studied extensively in the field of psychology for more than three decades. Extant research in the area of empowerment is often at the employee level in an employee-employer relationship or at the team level in an organizational setting. However, research that examines the role of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) media in consumer empowerment in the healthcare context has been neglected in the Information Systems (IS) literature. This dissertation uses three studies to address this gap in IS literature. In Study 1, an interpretive approach using a qualitative methodology was used to understand patients' motivations and barriers for health information seeking and/or sharing online. Results from the interviews showed that there are seven major motivations and barriers dimensions namely media-enabled health information seeking, health output quality produced by media, media-enabled health-related content management and communication, media-enabled convenience, media-enabled health information sharing, and media-enabled health problem solving and decision-making. In Study 2, a positivist approach using a survey methodology was used to test a research model linking the motivations and barriers dimensions identified in Study 1 to CMC media use and patient empowerment. The Uses and Gratifications theory was used to categorize the seven motivations and barriers dimensions identified in Study 1 into the three gratifications, namely, content gratifications, process gratifications, and social gratifications. Results from a national survey of 230 patients showed that content gratifications and social gratifications are positively related to CMC media use for health information seeking and/or sharing online, and that CMC media use for health information seeking and/or sharing online is positively related to patient empowerment. In Study 3, a survey methodology was used to examine the consequences of CMC media-enabled patient empowerment. Survey results showed that patient empowerment positively impacts quality of care, patient coping with illness, and patient confidence in treatment, and that quality of care mediates the relationship between patient empowerment and patient satisfaction. Together, the three studies help understand the role CMC media play in empowering healthcare consumers thereby addressing calls from IS researchers to focus on the consumer-perspective on the use of health information technologies (HIT)

A Sociomateriality Practice Perspective of Online Social Networking

Social networking using social media has fundamentally changed the way people maintain friendship networks, and the way people interact and communicate with others on their social networks. Traditional research on social networking uses associations between or relationships among actors. Using a sociomateriality perspective in this paper, we address calls to the IS research community to explore new ways of seeing and theorizing IS in society, inspired and enabled by an emerging sociomaterial world view. We argue that in the case of social networking, actors (social users and their friendship networks, social network designers etc.) and artifacts (hardware, social network interface / software, Internet, social media devices etc.) are so entangled with each other that studying them as one entity instead of two makes more sense than treating them as distinct or interdependent entities. In this paper, we aim to address how sociomateriality entails itself in the phenomenon of social networking