Change, attitude to change, and decision support system success

Analyzing Continuance of Cloud Computing in Higher Education Institutions: Should We Stay, or Should We Go?

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) consider resource optimization as an essential concern. Cloud computing (CC) in the fourth industrial revolution became the de-facto standard for delivering IT resources and services. CC is now a mainstream technology, andHEIs across the globe are rapidly transitioning to this model; hence, maintaining the retention of the customers of such technologies is challenging for cloud service providers. Current research concerning CC focused on adoption and acceptance. However, there is still a scarcity of research concerning such technology’s continued use in an organizational setting. Drawing on the prior literature in organizational-level continuance, this paper established a positivist quantitative-empirical study to bridge the research gap and assess the precursors for a continuance of cloud technology in HEIs. Subsequently, this study developed a conceptual framework by integrating the IS success model and the IS discontinuance model through the lens of the TOE framework. The data were collected from the decision-makers of Malaysian HEIs that have adopted CC services, and analyzed using Structural equation Modelling (SEM) based on Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results indicate that the continuance intention can be predicted by technology, organizational, environmental, and other contextualized factors, explaining 85.2% of the dependent variables’ variance. The paper closes with a discussion of the research limitations, contribution, and future directions.

CHARACTERISING ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY SUPPORTING SMEs’ LEARNINGS WITHIN COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION NETWORKS: INSIGHTS FROM MULTI-LEVEL CASE STUDIES

Through collaborative innovation networks (CINs), SMEs access valuable knowledge which requires the deployment of their absorptive capacity (ACAP) to be efficiently used. A small and medium enterprise (SME) absorbs this knowledge to fulfil reciprocal learning for achieving the network innovation goal, but also one-way learning to individually improve its performance. Nevertheless, no study explains how these opposing learnings unfold for SMEs in CINs to guide their ACAP deployment. Based on three cases of CINs including SMEs and two focus groups, we propose a characterisation of ACAP supporting SMEs’ learnings within CINs. As a result, an SME deploys acquisition, assimilation and application actions and attitudes to contribute to the CIN’s setting-up and operational stages, while fulfilling one-way learning. These practices have different focuses and intensity according to the network stage and the SME’s contextual setting. Hence, this study highlights the peculiarities of ACAP that enable SMEs in CINs manage the interplay between reciprocal and one-way learnings.

Continuance Use of Cloud Computing in Higher Education Institutions: A Conceptual Model

Resource optimization is a key concern for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Cloud Computing, as the recent generation in computing technology of the fourth industrial revolution, has emerged as the main standard of service and resource delivery. As cloud computing has grown into a mature technology and is being rapidly adopted in many HEIs across the world, retaining customers of this innovative technology has become a challenge to the cloud service providers. Current research trends on cloud computing have sought to study the acceptance or adoption of technology; however, little research has been devoted to the continuance use in an organizational setting. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate the antecedents of cloud computing continuance use in HEIs. Hence, drawing on the prior literature in organizational-level continuance, this research established a conceptual model that extends and contextualizes the IS continuance model through the lens of the TOE framework (i.e., technological, organizational, and environmental influences). The results of a pilot study, conducted through a survey with information and communications technology (ICT) decision makers, and based on the proposed conceptual model, indicate that the instrument is both reliable and valid, and so point the way towards further research. The paper closes with a discussion of the research limitations, contribution, and future directions.

Stressed decision makers and use of decision aids: a literature review and conceptual model

Purpose

Decision making is inherently stressful since the decision maker must choose between potentially conflicting alternatives with unique hazards and uncertain outcomes. Whereas decision aids such as decision support systems (DSS) can be beneficial in stressful scenarios, decision makers sometimes misuse them during decision making, leading to suboptimal outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stress, decision making and decision aid use.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conduct an extensive multi-disciplinary review of decision making and DSS use through the lens of stress and examine how stress, as perceived by decision makers, impacts their use or misuse of DSS even when such aids can improve decision quality. Research questions examine underlying sources of stress in managerial decision making that influence decision quality, relationships between a decision maker’s perception of stress, DSS use/misuse, and decision quality, and implications for research and practice on DSS design and capabilities.

Findings

The study presents a conceptual model that provides an integrative behavioral view of the impact of a decision maker’s perceived stress on their use of a DSS and the quality of their decisions. The authors identify critical knowledge gaps and propose a research agenda to improve decision quality and use of DSS by considering a decision maker’s perceived stress.

Originality/value

This study provides a previously unexplored view of DSS use and misuse as shaped by the decision and job stress experienced by decision makers. Through the application of four theories, the review and its findings highlight key design principles that can mitigate the negative effects of stressors on DSS use.

The Influence of Transformational Leadership and Leader Attitudes on Subordinate Attitudes and Implementation Success

Recent literature has focused on identifying factors that facilitate or impede the implementation of innovation in organizations. Attitudes toward change and transformational leadership are regarded as important determinants of implementation success. This study tested a multilevel model of transformational leadership and leaders’ attitudes toward the innovation being implemented as predictors of staff attitudes and implementation success. Participants were 565 service providers ( n = 478) and their supervisors ( n = 87) working in mental health organizations currently implementing an evidence-based practice (EBP). Results provided support for positive relationships between transformational leadership and staff attitudes toward EBP, as well as staff attitudes toward EBP and implementation success. Moreover, results supported an indirect relationship between transformational leadership and implementation success through employees’ attitudes toward EBP. The results suggest that the leader’s behaviors are likely more critical to innovation implementation than the leader’s attitudes.

An investigation into resistance practices at an SME consultancy

Purpose

Prior research emphasises that organisational founders have a good deal of influence in organisational development and, where information and communication technogies (ICTs) are involved, a generic strategy is usually deployed by managers in order to deal with any resistance that might occur. Cognisant of this, the authors investigated the role played by a managing director of a small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) consultancy in an ICT project associated with organisational development.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on an ethnography of an ICT related change management initiative which, theoretically, takes into account though from the social shaping of technology – specifically the idea that technologies in their broadest sense are subject to ongoing work beyond the design stage.

Findings

The authors argue that Markus' interaction theory of resistance still has relevance today and we extend it by emphasising the problem of homogenising users and downplaying their ability to appropriate resistance strategies in situ.

Research limitations/implications

The study is based upon one group of individuals' experiences. Further case studies of resistance success are required which further highlight how this is achieved and why.

Practical implications

Those engaged with organisational development projects need to be better educated as to the reasons for resistance, particularly positive ones, and the methods by which this might take place.

Originality/value

This study conceptualises strategies for “overcoming” resistance as managerial technologies. Conceptualising them in this way shows the deployment of such technologies to be a complicated and active process where the audience for such things are involved in how they are received and appropriated to suit differing agendas.

Measuring mobile patient safety information system success: an empirical study

OBJECTIVE

The Health Risk Reminders and Surveillance (HRRS) system was designed to deliver critical abnormal test results of severely ill patients from Laboratory, Radiology, and Pathology departments to physicians within 5 min using cell phone text messages. This paper explores the success of the HRRS system.

METHOD

This study employed an augmented version of the DeLone and McLean IS success model. Seven variables (system quality, information quality, system use, user satisfaction, mobile healthcare anxiety, impact on the individual and impact on the organization) were used to evaluate the success of the HRRS system. The interrelationships between the seven variables were hypothesized and the hypotheses were empirically tested.

RESULTS

The results indicate that the information quality of the HRRS system is positively associated with both system use and user satisfaction. In addition, system use is positively associated with user satisfaction, which is also positively associated with mobile healthcare anxiety. Moreover, results indicate that impact on the individual is positively associated with both user satisfaction and mobile healthcare anxiety. Finally, the impact of the organization is positively associated with impact on the individual.

CONCLUSION

The results of the study provide an expanded understanding of the factors that contribute to mobile patient safety information system (IS) success. Implications of the relationship between system use and physician mobile healthcare anxiety are discussed.

An empirical test of the DeLone-McLean model of information system success

This paper tests the model of information system success proposed by DeLone and McLean using a field study of a mandatory information system. The results show that perceived system quality and perceived information quality are significant predictors of user satisfaction with the system, but not of system use. Perceived system quality was also a significant predictor of system use. User satisfaction was found to be a strong predictor of individual impact, whereas the influence of system use on individual impact was insignificant.

Developing Intraorganizational Electronic Commerce Strategy: An Ethnographic Study

This paper presents an argument for qualitative research and the use of ethnography in information systems (IS) research using a detailed investigation of the types of strategies used in implementing electronic commerce in a corporate finance institution. The paper describes how these strategies were developed and why and models those responses. This paper confirms other studies which argue that certain key elements must be in place to ensure the successful implementation of information technology (IT) or electronic commerce. However, this research has highlighted the fact that there are important influential issues operating at another level within the organization studied. Politics and the power of vested interest groups within an organization and managerial misunderstanding about what electronic commerce is created unrealistic expectations of the innovation by management.

Successful is Innovation: The Contingent Contributions of Innovation Characteristics and Implementation Process

This paper unifies two apparently competing theories of information systems (IS) implementation by developing a model in which the contributions of innovation characteristics and implementation process theories are contingent upon the implementation context. To do this, we identify the different assumptions regarding the implementation context implicit in the two theories and, based on these differences, develop a contingent model within which to integrate the two theories. A partial test of the model within one particular context is reported using data collected from the end-users of an IS innovation introduced in a State health system in Australia. As hypothesized, we find that, within the context, characterized by high individual level impact and low group level impact, the contribution of innovation characteristics to implementation success is higher than that of implementation process.