The role of emotional attachment in IPA continuance intention: an emotional attachment model

Purpose

This study aims to examine the relationship between emotional attachment (EA) and intelligent personal assistant (IPA) continuance intention. While existing theories emphasize purely rational and goal-oriented factors in terms of information technology (IT) continuance intention, this research examines how users' EA toward technology impacts their continuance intention in the absence of cognitive and habitual factors.

Design/methodology/approach

This study contextualizes attachment theory from the social psychology/consumer psychology literature to an IT application and formulates and tests a new model that is proposed in the context of IPA continuance. Five research hypotheses developed from contextualization and application of the theory were posited in a structural model and empirically validated using survey results from IPA users.

Findings

The results show that users' EA to IPA use significantly influences their IPA continuance intention, along with emotional trust and interaction quality with the IPA.

Originality/value

This study contextualizes attachment theory developed in the social psychology/consumer psychology literature to formulate and test a new model in the context of IPA continuance. This work contributes to the theoretical understanding by investigating IPA continuance intention in the absence of cognitive or habitual factors and fills a critical research gap in IT post-adoption literature. IPA is just one example of technologies to which individuals can form attachments and this research provides an important foundation for future research by positing and testing the value of EA in IT post-adoption behavior. This research also contributes to practical knowledge by inferring that IPA manufacturers, managers and vendors could extend their revenue streams by integrating product features that capture emotion.

Adopting Artificial Intelligence in Public Healthcare: The Effect of Social Power and Learning Algorithms

Although the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is still in its early stages, it is important to understand the factors influencing its adoption. Using a qualitative multi-case study of three hospitals in China, we explored the research of factors affecting AI adoption from a social power perspective with consideration of the learning algorithm abilities of AI systems. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, participative observations, and document analysis, and analyzed using NVivo 11. We classified six social powers into knowledge-based and non-knowledge-based power structures, revealing a social power pattern related to the learning algorithm ability of AI.

Technology renewal, user resistance, user adoption: status quo bias theory revisited

Purpose

The article provides a conceptual replication and enrichment of the status quo bias theory in the specific context of understanding IT department user resistance and user adoption. The findings can assist technology renewals and associated change management professionals to assess and plan the adoption and active usage of human resource systems.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used survey method to gather data. All items were based on prior literature. They administrated the survey to employees of GOODTECH (name changed), information systems (IS) department members, situated in France. They obtained 103 valid responses along with usage data from the system to run their path model, in order to validate the proposed research model.

Findings

The study offers an enriched user resistance model (URM) to understand why IT-savvy employees would resist or adopt new human resource tools. Apart from providing partial validity to status quo bias theory in the French context, the enriched model uses behavioral intention to use as an intermediate variable to explain the influence of two key constructs of the original theory: switching cost and switching benefits. This research provides a better explanatory power to understand the cause of user resistance and new IT use.

Research limitations/implications

The sample size used in the study can be considered as a limitation, although power analysis reveals that the results are significant and valid. The context of the study is also limited to one country and to a specific type of IS implementation scenario. Since the purpose of the paper was to offer contextual theory enhancement, the findings are valid for this purpose.

Practical implications

Digital project managers are offered a framework to increase technology adoption of new human resource tools and evaluate how to reduce user resistance at times of technology renewals. Self-efficacy for change and colleagues’ opinion can indirectly impact behavioral intention to use via switching cost and switching benefit perceptions and thus reducing resistance perceptions as well as increasing adoption of new IT tools in post-implementation phases.

Originality/value

The paper enriches the well-established user resistance theory in IS domain in a context of human resource post-implementation phase by studying IT-savvy end user's perceptions. The paper demonstrates the need to integrate user adoption and user resistance variables in one parsimonious framework and extends support to emerging research on dual focus perspective.

Health-tech startups in healthcare service delivery: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

An efficient and affordable healthcare service delivery to everyone is a prerogative of the national governments. Such delivery is quite exacting, and gaps remain. In this regard, startups are trying to disrupt the market with innovative solutions and reach the underserved market. Though anecdotal evidence remains, a rigorous literature review is missing. This paper attempts to understand the status of health-tech startups in healthcare service delivery.

METHODS

We scanned a total of 110 journals - Financial Times top 50, top ten information systems journals listed by the Australian Business Dean Council, and the top 50 Scopus indexed journals in health informatics and health information management. We followed a systematic process for this scoping review - reading of titles, abstracts, and then full papers for final analysis based on inclusion and exclusion criteria.

RESULTS

A total of 76 articles met the inclusion criteria. Only five studies portrayed the status of health-tech startups in healthcare service delivery. To capture the overall startup ecosystem, we continued with a scoping review of all the 76 articles.

DISCUSSIONS

The identified five themes are Technology adoption, Electronic health services, Business planning and framework, Psychographics, and Regulations. There is evidence of technology adoption in service delivery and its nature in the businesses undertaken by startups. Very few studies represented the patterns of the existing business model. The acceptance of the services is dependent on service effectiveness and affordability. The challenges are licensing, policies, data privacy and security, and inadequate technology access among healthcare seekers.

CONCLUSIONS

Albeit the feasibility potential, research concerning the impact of health tech startups in healthcare service delivery is emerging but incipient. The review indicates that research on startups is inadequate, especially related to entrepreneurship, business frameworks, and regulations. Future research should explore the same.

Barriers and Benefits of ICT Adoption in the Nigerian Construction Industry. A Comprehensive Literature Review

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is seen as a way to enhance knowledge collection in the construction sector. Although the theoretical benefits of ICT implementation have been clarified, realizing such benefits is insufficient. This paper attempted a systematic analysis of the literature using ATLAS.ti 9 software to save, identify, and analyze this study’s data. A total of 102 articles were actively reviewed, including 82 Scopus journals and 20 conference papers published from 2003 to 2020. In this article, from a construction industry point of view, the ICT adoption process is considered as an interaction between technology, task, and an individual from a construction industry perspective. While ICT is acknowledged as a source of aggressive gain by both practitioners and scholars, ICT’s sole presence would definitely not guarantee achievement in the industry’s ICT approval. Companies cannot grasp the full benefits of ICT, except that users are able to adopt the technology. Hence, the issues related to ICT adoption need to be examined.

IS Reappraisal and Technology Adaptation Behaviors

Employees have to adapt to newly implemented information systems (IS) because they are often perceived as radical changes or disruptions. To understand such adaptation behavior, IS research suggests that employees first appraise the new IS and second perform technology adaptive behaviors. However, while the psychology literature indicates that adaptation is a continuous process unfolding over time, previous IS literature treats adaptation towards IS implementation as a rather singular, noniterative process. As firms continue to implement IS, an understanding of reappraisal and the influence of technology adaptation behavior is vital to ensure successful implementations. Therefore, the present paper investigates reappraisal and the influences of four different technology adaptation behaviors. We conducted a longitudinal study and used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to validate our research model. The findings reveal that employees reappraise the newly implemented IS over time regarding perceived opportunity, threat, and controllability and demonstrate that technology adaption behaviors influence such reappraisal. One specific finding is that employees might get into positive or negative reappraisal loops. We thereby contribute to research by extending the adaptation behavior literature and add a new piece of the puzzle to understand how employees adapt towards newly implemented IS over time.

An Exploration of the Drivers of Non- Adoption Behavior

While there has been a substantial amount of attention within the information systems research community towards understanding the phenomenon of adoption, much less is known about non-adoption. This study examines the factors surrounding the decision to not adopt a technology and whether certain factors exert differing effects on individuals in particular ways such that concurrent factors could be identified to develop a classification of the specific types of non-adoption behavior. Utilizing inhibitor theory and the symbolic adoption model as a foundational framework for the different types of non-adoption, we posit that different types of non-adoption exist which is demonstrated by determining the perceptions towards technology that coalesce around different types of non-adoption. We conducted a two-phase investigation into nonadoption with two goals in mind: 1) identify and explore specific factors of the IT that are associated with the rejection decision and are distinct from the adoption decision; and 2) determine the extent to which these factors (along with traditional enablers) differentiate between different types of non-adoption. The results from a discriminant function analysis (DFA) indicate the coalescence of specific perceptual variables according to the types of non-adoption behavior, specifically, the discriminatory power of differing perceptions of IT between trial rejecters, symbolic rejecters, trial accepters, symbolic adopters, and adopters. The implications for research and implications for practice are discussed.

An Exploration of the Drivers of Non-Adoption Behavior

While there has been a substantial amount of attention within the information systems research community towards understanding the phenomenon of adoption, much less is known about non-adoption. This study examines the factors surrounding the decision to not adopt a technology and whether certain factors exert differing effects on individuals in particular ways such that concurrent factors could be identified to develop a classification of the specific types of non-adoption behavior. Utilizing inhibitor theory and the symbolic adoption model as a foundational framework for the different types of non-adoption, we posit that different types of non-adoption exist which is demonstrated by determining the perceptions towards technology that coalesce around different types of non-adoption. We conducted a two-phase investigation into non-adoption with two goals in mind: 1) identify and explore specific factors of the IT that are associated with the rejection decision and are distinct from the adoption decision, and 2) determine the extent to which these factors (along with traditional enablers) differentiate between different types of non-adoption. The results from a discriminant function analysis (DFA) indicate the coalescence of specific perceptual variables according to the types of non-adoption behavior, specifically, the discriminatory power of differing perceptions of IT between trial rejecters, symbolic rejecters, trial accepters, symbolic adopters, and adopters. The implications for research and implications for practice are discussed.

Disruptive-Technology Avoidance in Healthcare

Disruptive innovation has transformed business activities as well as individuals throughout a variety of industries. In healthcare, the implementation of electronic health records (EHR) innovation has changed the way healthcare organizations handle patient records. Despite the potential benefits EHR can bring to healthcare organizations, there is evidence to show that healthcare providers are avoiding EHR innovations. Little research in information system mainstream research has addressed this phenomenon. To understand EHR avoidance, a mid-range theory is evoked from this textual analysis of responses gathered from healthcare providers at a large international hospital. The data was analyzed by applying a revealed causal mapping technique (RCM). Results of the study revealed not only the key constructs surrounding EHR avoidance, but also the underlying concepts that are shaping each of these constructs. This study demonstrated that the use of the RCM methodology yielded concepts and constructs of EHR avoidance that are not suggested by generalized theory, and revealed main interactions and linkages between these constructs.

Bringing compassion into information systems research: A research agenda and call to action

In this article, we assert that compassion-driven approaches are the sustainable way for information and communication technologies to contribute to economic value. We urge future information systems research to emphasize, with equal vigor, the joint goals of compassion and financial gains from information and communication technologies. We present a broad agenda for future information systems research based on this premise. We also discuss how certain core assumptions underlying traditional information systems research—so far, driven primarily by economic value as outcome—would need to change in order to support this new agenda emphasizing compassion and economic value as complementary and synergistic outcomes. We provide a brief concrete illustration of this proposed agenda, and its underlying revised assumptions, by drawing on the example of a prominent field of study in information systems research, namely health information systems research.

Change-Related Communication and Employees' Responses During the Anticipation Stage of IT-Enabled Organizational Transformation

This study focuses on a medium-sized, nonprofit healthcare service management organization which was undergoing a major transformation enabled by information technology. We examined how uncertainty during the anticipation stage affected the staff's emotional responses to the new technology. We categorized employees' understandings of the new technology into four domains: (1) why the technology was adopted, (2) what the functionality of the technology would be, (3) how the technology might affect their work life, and (4) when such an effect would materialize. Due to uncertainty during the anticipation stage, participants were not able to fully appraise the situation. Based on their hypothetical expectations, participants experienced both hope and fear (i.e., suspense). In order to manage the psychological discomfort created by this emotional ambivalence, participants actively sought social interaction with colleagues in order to gain information about the new technology, to build camaraderie, or both. The former directly decreased the level of perceived uncertainty by closing information gaps, and the latter reduced anxiety by creating a sense of community. Our study illustrates how seeking social support during the pre-implementation time frame has the capacity to help employees prepare themselves, both cognitively and emotionally, for adopting a new technology before they have any tangible interaction with it.

What Clinical Information Is Valuable to Doctors Using Mobile Electronic Medical Records and When?

Background

There has been a lack of understanding on what types of specific clinical information are most valuable for doctors to access through mobile-based electronic medical records (m-EMRs) and when they access such information. Furthermore, it has not been clearly discussed why the value of such information is high.

Objective

The goal of this study was to investigate the types of clinical information that are most valuable to doctors to access through an m-EMR and when such information is accessed.

Methods

Since 2010, an m-EMR has been used in a tertiary hospital in Seoul, South Korea. The usage logs of the m-EMR by doctors were gathered from March to December 2015. Descriptive analyses were conducted to explore the overall usage patterns of the m-EMR. To assess the value of the clinical information provided, the usage patterns of both the m-EMR and a hospital information system (HIS) were compared on an hourly basis. The peak usage times of the m-EMR were defined as continuous intervals having normalized usage values that are greater than 0.5. The usage logs were processed as an indicator representing specific clinical information using factor analysis. Random intercept logistic regression was used to explore the type of clinical information that is frequently accessed during the peak usage times.

Results

A total of 524,929 usage logs from 653 doctors (229 professors, 161 fellows, and 263 residents; mean age: 37.55 years; males: 415 [63.6%]) were analyzed. The highest average number of m-EMR usage logs (897) was by medical residents, whereas the lowest (292) was by surgical residents. The usage amount for three menus, namely inpatient list (47,096), lab results (38,508), and investigation list (25,336), accounted for 60.1% of the peak time usage. The HIS was used most frequently during regular hours (9:00 AM to 5:00 PM). The peak usage time of the m-EMR was early in the morning (6:00 AM to 10:00 AM), and the use of the m-EMR from early evening (5:00 PM) to midnight was higher than during regular business hours. Four factors representing the types of clinical information were extracted through factor analysis. Factors related to patient investigation status and patient conditions were associated with the peak usage times of the m-EMR (P<.01).

Conclusions

Access to information regarding patient investigation status and patient conditions is crucial for decision making during morning activities, including ward rounds. The m-EMRs allow doctors to maintain the continuity of their clinical information regardless of the time and location constraints. Thus, m-EMRs will best evolve in a manner that enhances the accessibility of clinical information helpful to the decision-making process under such constraints.

Voluntary Use of Information Technology: An Analysis and Synthesis of the Literature

Voluntariness is recognized as an important influence on individual and collective technology acceptance. We conducted a comprehensive review of this literature and identified a rich set of voluntariness concepts and methods of operationalization. However, while considerable empirical evidence is reported in the literature, our review also revealed inconsistent results concerning the relationship between voluntariness and other concepts. Against that backdrop, we synthesized the literature into three types of voluntariness - perceived, intended and realizable voluntariness (RVOL), and showed how prior literature had not adequately accounted for RVOL. Moreover, we examined the multiple mechanisms that influence voluntariness and created a model to describe how to advance new knowledge about the important relationships among the three types of voluntariness and between voluntariness and user behavior. We argue that these concepts and relationships may help advance our knowledge of how a new technology is used individually and collectively in organizations.

Evaluation of health information systems research in information systems research: A meta-analysis

Given the importance of the health-care industry and the promise of health information systems, researchers are encouraged to build on the shoulders of giants as the saying goes. The health information systems field has a unique opportunity to learn from and extend the work that has already been done by the highly correlated information systems field. As a result, this research article presents a past, present and future meta-analysis of health information systems research in information systems journals over the 2000–2015 time period. Our analysis reviewed 126 articles on a variety of topics related to health information systems research published in the “Senior Scholars” list of the top eight ranked information systems academic journals. Across the selected information systems academic journals, our findings compare research methodologies applied, health information systems topic areas investigated and research trends. Interesting results emerge in the range and evolution of health information systems research and opportunities for health information systems researchers and practitioners to consider moving forward.

More than meets the eye: working around technology in cross-boundary work contexts

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia.

Design/methodology/approach

– Case study methodology involving semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observations, and archival records was utilized in the study. Interview subjects include management staff, general employees, and information technology (IT) specialists to provide rich descriptions of their work practice.

Findings

– Three distinct contexts contribute to cross-boundary work practice in relation to IT use and non-use, namely, standardization (complete IT use), hybridization (partial IT use), and conventionalization (zero IT use). Technology enactment strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, adaptation, and configuration are employed depending on actors’ interpretation of technology complexity and task interdependency.

Practical implications

– Early interventions could involve examining how and why employees accept or avoid technology as part of their work practice and how they switch between enactment strategies. Organizations could ensure better team support to capitalize on the robust social interaction in cross-boundary work contexts to develop greater synergy in technology improvisations.

Originality/value

– The study extends the technology enactment perspective as it offers new meanings to structures of action by understanding the temporal agentic orientations and how these are constructed by cross-boundary work contexts. It also offers insight into how enactment strategies are developed according to the productive tensions that arise from the interplay of cognitive orientations.