Involving Information Technology Research Articles

A Meta-Analysis Comparing the Sunk Cost Effect for IT and Non-IT Projects

Escalation is a serious management problem, and sunk costs are believed to be a key factor in promoting escalation behavior. While many laboratory experiments have been conducted to examine the effect of sunk costs on escalation, there has been no effort to examine these studies as a group in order to determine the effect size associated with the so-called “sunk cost effect.” Using meta-analysis, we analyzed the results of 20 sunk cost experiments and found: (1) a large effect size associated with sunk costs, and (2) stronger effects in experiments involving information technology (IT) projects as opposed to non-IT projects. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.

The role of external and internal influences on information systems security – a neo-institutional perspective

This research is an attempt to better understand how external and internal organizational influences shape organizational actions for improving information systems security. A case study of a multi-national company is presented and then analyzed from the perspective of neo-institutional theory. The analysis indicates that coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic processes were evident, although it was difficult to distinguish normative from mimetic influences. Two internal forces related to work practices were identified representing resistance to initiatives to improve security: the institutionalization of work mobility and the institutionalization of efficiency outcomes expected with the adoption of company initiatives, especially those involving information technology. The interweaving of top–down and bottom–up influences resulted in an effort to reinforce, and perhaps reinstitutionalize the systems component of information security. The success of this effort appeared to hinge on top management championing information system security initiatives and propagating an awareness of the importance of information security among employees at all levels of the company. The case shows that while regulatory forces, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are powerful drivers for change, other institutional influences play significant roles in shaping the synthesis of organizational change.

Pay for Performance in Radiology: ACR White Paper

During the next few years, some portion of physician reimbursement will be increasingly based on the quality and efficiency of service, a practice commonly referred to as pay for performance (P4P). Performance benchmarks are the discrete parameters of structure, process, or outcome metrics whose attainment defines good quality care. Private payers are already rewarding primary care physicians for practices that adhere to quality standards, are efficient, involve information technology, and result in high patient satisfaction. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will have completed the development of performance measures to be used in Medicare payment strategies for all specialties by the end of 2006 and anticipates phasing in the program fully by 2008. This article describes P4P, its importance to the ACR, the organizations involved in developing it, the ACR's activities to date, and the steps the ACR must take to ensure that radiologists are remunerated fairly as physician payment becomes based, in part, on performance.

Computer-mediated group influence on ethical behavior

Drawing on previous research in ethical behavior in information technology, this study examines the effects of group discussion, using virtual teams, on an individual’s intention to behave ethically/unethically. It was hypothesized that behavioral intention would be influenced by an individual’s attitude (toward ethical behavior), personal normative beliefs, ego strength, locus of control, perceived importance, gender and the scenario, and that computer-mediated group discussion would impact an individual’s ethical behavioral intention. This was tested through an experiment using five different ethical scenarios involving information technology. The results show that for two of the five scenarios, individual behavioral intention was significantly more unethical after computer-mediated group discussion than before, while for one scenario, individual behavioral intention was significantly more ethical after computer-mediated group discussion than before. The results of this study may help organizations to develop realistic training programs for IT professionals that account for changes in employee’s personal ethical models after interacting with others.

Ethical values of IT professionals: evidence from Hong Kong

In the wake of recent scandals involving information technology (IT) professionals, the ethics of this profession deserve more attention. This paper reports on the first phase of an initiative to research the ethics of IT professionals. The ethical values of the IT profession in Hong Kong were investigated using an instrument designed to reflect the stages of moral reasoning present in Kohlberg's theory of Cognitive Moral Development. The vast majority of respondents espoused ethical values consistent with both a high level of reasoning and the prevailing societal culture. At the same time, many respondents exhibited considerable uncertainty in their ethical reasoning, indicating a dynamic tension between high and low moral principles. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Use of a prospective risk analysis method to improve the safety of the cancer chemotherapy process

To perform a risk analysis of the cancer chemotherapy process, by comparing five different organizations. To quantitatively demonstrate the usefulness of centralization and information technologies, to identify residual risks that may be the target of additional actions. A reengineering of the process started in 1999 and was planned to be finished in 2006. The analysis was performed after the centralization and at the beginning of information technologies integration. Two thousand two hundred beds university hospital, with medical, surgical, haematological, gynaecological, geriatric, paediatric oncological departments. Twelve thousand cancer chemotherapies each year. According to the failure modes, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) method, the failure modes were defined and their criticality indexes were calculated on the basis of the likelihood of occurrence, the potential severity for the patients, and the detection probability. Criticality indexes were compared and the acceptability of residual risks was evaluated. The sum of criticality indexes of 27 identified failure modes was 3596 for the decentralized phase, 2682 for centralization, 2385 for electronic prescription, 2081 for electronic production control, and 1824 for bedside scanning (49% global reduction). The greatest improvements concerned the risk of errors in the production protocols (by a factor of 48), followed by readability problems during transmission (14) and product/dose errors during the production (8). Among the six criticality indexes remaining superior to 100 in the final process, two were judged to be acceptable, whereas further improvements were planned for the four others. Centralization to the pharmacy was associated with a strong improvement but additional developments involving information technologies also contributed to a major risk reduction. A cost-effect analysis confirmed the pertinence of all developments, as the cost per gained criticality point remained stable all over the different phases.

Information Technologies for the Prevention of Medication Errors

Significant efforts are currently under way to improve the safety of the medication process in hospitals. Among other solutions, new developments involving information technologies (IT) have attracted growing attention, as they have the potential to attenuate a leading cause of error: human failure. IT interventions focus on the three major steps of drug use: prescription (computerized physician order entry, CPOE), dispensing (automated dispensing systems, ADS) and administration (scanning barcodes or RFID tags). Although these technologies are used more and more in hospitals, only few robust data are actually available to measure their real impact on patient safety. CPOE is the best studied, followed by ADS and scanning technologies. More data are necessary to demonstrate their usefulness or to generalize results obtained in selected environments. An increased use of IT in future years seems to be unavoidable, but its implementation will be a real challenge, since cultural, human, technical, and ergonomic aspects will have to be taken into consideration to avoid failure. Moreover, these technologies can also potentially induce new risks, e.g. data entry errors, that need a careful consideration during implementation. In conclusion, IT has a huge potential to help reduce the occurrence of medication errors in hospitals, but the real positive impact and the induced risks need to be systematically and scientifically evaluated in various environments. In the Geneva university hospitals, some developments are under way to implement IT on pilot processes, with a concomitant evaluation by a systematic risk analysis method (FMECA).

Teacher Training via Distance Learning Focussed on Educational Issues of Information Technology

This paper deals with the main problem of involving information technology in teacher education - structure and contents of teachers' training courses based on distance learning. In Lithuania, the Standard of computer literacy for educators has been developed. It should be the main source of all teachers' training courses on information technology. The Standard consists of two parts: technological and educational. The main attention of the paper is paid to the analysis and requirements of the educational part that becomes more and more urgent: it requires some psy- chological, cognitive, social, and pedagogical knowledge referring to the information technology usage in education. This paper comprehensively covers the problems of application of information technology in education, course planning, and implementation of distance teaching, it referring to the teachers' training course on educational issues of information technology via distance learning, carried out by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania and organized by the Centre of Information Technologies of Education, and summarises its results.

Involving Salient Stakeholders

Business process change involving information technology has become notorious for high failure rates. Apparently, the larger the project scope and size, the higher the failure rate. Also, as a major factor among others associated with failure, past research has identified an overemphasis on technical validity and functionality at the expense of the social and institutional process side in change projects. Yet, even if important factors had been correctly and completely identified, the social process, within which they interact, might have remained obscured. Furthermore, long-term, large-scale change projects, particularly when they encompass IT components as major building blocks, defy the conventional start-to-closeout, detailed project planning. Rather, they unfold in a stepwise fashion with alternative paths towards a coarse goal, particularly in environments with distributed powers, as in the public sector. For this process and this environment, the author proposes that participatory action research (PAR) has the capacity to provide a holistic methodological and social-process frame and a mode of joint inquiry. This article gives an account of the approach based on a large government change project in its early stages. In this project, practitioners and researchers formed a joint team, which strove to lay foundations to a multi-year, IT-enabled change initiative meant to become a state-wide exemplar for similar projects. During this early project stage, salient stakeholders and their needs were identified, which helped launch a highly inclusive process. However, as found in this project, external influences impacted this public-sector project in a way that the build-up of consensus remained incomplete, underscoring the need for ongoing stakeholder involvement within the project.

Engaging in activities involving information technology: dimensions, modes, and flow.

An engagement mode involves a subject (e.g., a user of information technology, or IT) who is engaged in an activity with an object in a certain manner (the mode). The purpose of this study is to develop a general model of engagement modes that may be used for understanding how IT-related activities are shaped by properties of the user and the IT object. A questionnaire involving items on IT engagement and the experience of flow was administered to 300 participants. The results supported an engagement mode (EM) model involving 5 different engagement modes (enjoying/acceptance, ambition/curiosity, avoidance/hesitation, frustration/ anxiety, and efficiency/productivity) characterized on 3 dimensions (evaluation of object, locus of control between subject and object, and intrinsic or extrinsic focus of motivation). The flow experience follows from a balance between enjoying/ acceptance and efficiency/productivity propelled by ambition/curiosity. The EM model could provide a platform for considering how IT users, IT applications, and IT environments should work together to yield both enjoyment and efficiency. Actual or potential applications of this research include designing IT training programs on different levels of specificity.

Charles W. Dohner, PhD: an evaluator and mentor in medical education.

As one of the first generation medical education pioneers, Charles W. Dohner, PhD established the ninth office of medical education at the University of Washington (UW) where he served as chairman from 1967-1996. With a background in education and measurement, he focused his work on evaluation of educational programs and faculty development. The Department of Medical Education went through three distinct stages of development: pathfinding 1967-1972 focused on developing working relationships with the faculty and clarifying identity, integration into academic affairs 1972-1980, and direct leadership by department faculty 1980-1996. Dohner helped to create and evaluate the WAMI program, a regional medical education program for the states of Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. He served as a consultant to a specialty board, the founding president of the Society of Directors of Research in Medical Education, and a frequent consultant in international medical education. Dohner identified three important innovations in medical education: educators in academic medicine, simulations and performance assessment, and community-based medical education. Success factors for professional education include technical competence in education, interpersonal communication and collaboration skills, a plan for personal growth, and use of mentors. Future trends in medical education will involve information technology, professionalism, wellness and complementary medicine, and performance assessment. He has been a passionate spokesman for excellence in medical education and most noted for his roles as an evaluator, program developer, and mentor of academic leaders.

Pedagogų kompiuterinio raštingumo problematika

This paper deals with the main problem of involving information technologies in education – contents of teachers' training courses. Three directions are presented: preparation of teachers (1), in-service teacher training (2), re-qualification of the speciality (3). The main attention should be paid to the constant in-service teachers' training. The Standard of computer literacy for educators has been developed. It should be the main sources of all teachers' training courses on informa­tion technology. The Standard consists of two parts: technological one and educational one. The technological part is based on ECDL Start modules. The educational part is uniqu: it requires some psychological, social, and pedagogical knowledge referring to information technology usage in education. The main attention of the paper is paid to the analysis and requirements of the educa­tional part of the Standard of computer literacy for educators.

Computer technology applications in industrial and organizational psychology.

This article reviews computer applications developed and utilized by industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists, both in practice and in research. A primary emphasis is on applications developed for Internet usage, because this "network of networks" changes the way I-O psychologists work. The review focuses on traditional and emerging topics in I-O psychology. The first topic involves information technology applications in measurement, defined broadly across levels of analysis (persons, groups, organizations) and domains (abilities, personality, attitudes). Discussion then focuses on individual learning at work, both in formal training and in coping with continual automation of work. A section on job analysis follows, illustrating the role of computers and the Internet in studying jobs. Shifting focus to the group level of analysis, we briefly review how information technology is being used to understand and support cooperative work. Finally, special emphasis is given to the emerging "third discipline" in I-O psychology research-computational modeling of behavioral events in organizations. Throughout this review, themes of innovation and dissemination underlie a continuum between research and practice. The review concludes by setting a framework for I-O psychology in a computerized and networked world.

Analysis of Complex Decision-Making Processes in Health Care: Cognitive Approaches to Health Informatics

Decision making by health care professionals is often complicated by the need to integrate ill-structured, uncertain, and potentially conflicting information from various sources. In this paper cognitive approaches to the study of decision making are presented within the context of a variety of complex health care applications. In recent years it has become increasingly accepted that in order to build information systems that can support complex decision making it will be necessary to more fully understand human decision-making processes. Methodological approaches are described that aim to explicate the decision making and reasoning skills of subjects as they perform activities involving the processing of complex information. The paper begins by presenting the theoretical foundations for cognitive analyses of decision making, including discussion of major approaches to the study of decision making in a range of real-world domains, including medicine. Applications of cognitive approaches are then illustrated, including a description of a study in which subjects were asked to “think aloud” in providing treatment decisions for complex medical cases. The resulting protocols were then analyzed for subjects' use of decision strategies and problems in reasoning. Extension of cognitive approaches to the study of group decision-making processes is also described. Recent approaches are discussed which borrow from advances in the study of human-computer interaction and which utilize video analysis of decision-making activities involving information technologies. Using these approaches it has been found that health care information systems, such as computerized patient record systems, may have inadvertent effects on human decision making. Implications of a cognitive approach to improving our understanding of complex decision making are discussed in the context of developing appropriate computer-based decision support for both individuals and groups.

The future of computer ethics: You ain't seen nothin' yet!

The computer revolution can be usefully divided into three stages, two of which have already occurred: the introduction stage and the permeation stage. We have only recently entered the third and most important stage – the power stage – in which many of the most serious social, political, legal, and ethical questions involving information technology will present themselves on a large scale. The present article discusses several reasons to believe that future developments in information technology will make computer ethics more vibrant and more important than ever. Computer ethics is here to stay!

The utilization of aid organizations in the development of information technology in developing countries

Aid agencies have played a major role as sources of funding in assisting developing countries to implement projects involving information technology. In many developing countries large human and capital resources are now being committed to the development of information technology. The aid agencies conceived the development of the information technology infrastructure as a necessary adjunct to the overall development of the economy. The aid organizations have also gone a step further to help developing countries build their own capacity in information technology. Reports on the efforts initiated by leading aid agencies in funding projects aimed at the development of information technology, with special emphasis on information technology development in libraries in Africa. Suggests means as to how aid organizations can assist developing economies to develop information technology.

Systems engineering and systems management for reengineering

This article presents an overview and perspective on systems engineering and systems management for reengineering and related approaches to organizational and technology revitalization, especially for efforts that involve information technology and software engineering. There are at least three types of reengineering that can be considered: reengineering at the levels of product, process, and systems management. We claim that all three are needed, and an approach at one level only may not be satisfactory. Support for this claim is provided.

Part I, Clinical Information Systems

Despite the fact that cutting edge technologies are already at our doorsteps, most nurses are still struggling with old technologies of the 70s. The greatest stumbling block to change involving information technology is the nurses' unfavorable experience with the difficult and inefficient applications currently in place. Qualities of the fourth-generation clinical systems and the urgent need for technology education are outlined to help shape the development of the new generation of systems.

The road not taken: Observing a process of issue selection and model conceptualization

AbstractThis article describes a case study involving information technology managers and their new programmer recruitment policy, but the primary interest is methodological. The processes of issue generation and selection and model conceptualization are described. Early use of “magnetic hexagons” allowed the generation of a range of issues, most of which would not have emerged if system dynamics elicitation techniques had been employed. With the selection of a specific issue, flow diagraming was used to conceptualize a model, computer implementation and scenario generation following naturally. Observations are made on the processes of system dynamics modeling, particularly on the need to employ general techniques of knowledge elicitation in the early stages of interventions. It is proposed that flexible approaches should be used to generate, select, and study the issues, since these reduce any biasing of the elicitation toward system dynamics problems and also allow the participants to take up the most appropriate problem‐ structuring approach.

Aid agencies and information technology development

Abstract Aid organizations represent an important source of funding for projects involving information technology (IT) in developing countries. However, few of these organizations see information technology as a new and important sector in development, despite the fact that numerous developing countries are themselves committing large human and capital resources to information technology development. This situation may change, given some new initiatives by a few organizations to begin helping developing countries build their own capacity in information technology. This article is a report on these initiatives, and is also a brief analysis of the role of the World Bank in information technology transfer.