IT-based Innovations Research Articles

Effect of Communication Strategies for Implementation of IT-based Educational Innovation During COVID-19 Pandemic on Students’ Motivation, Attitude, and Intent

The COVID-19 pandemic made the world come to a halt, but the number and pace of innovation responses became faster than ever. However, there is a paucity of studies concentrating on the management/implementation of innovation in educational institutes. Moreover, no in-depth study has been conducted on the effect of communication strategies adopted for educational innovation implementation on the students’ motivation, attitude, and intent to use, particularly in India, to the best of the writer’s information. Accordingly, the present study aims to address the research gaps by measuring the effect of select communication strategies used for implementing IT-based educational innovations. Grounded on prior research, the study scrutinizes the effect of rational persuasive strategy (utilizing legitimate contentions), assertive strategy (utilizing intimidation), and consulting strategy (engaging in the act of giving expert advice), and inspirational (evoking feelings of appreciation) strategy. To address the hypotheses framed, the data for the cross-sectional quantitative study was collected from engineering students using an e-questionnaire from Rajasthan, India. The sample comprised 305 (84.3% male and 15.7% female) students, with a mean age of 18.16 years. The findings of PLS-SEM using SmartPLS 3.2.9 confirmed that all strategies except assertive strategy had a positive and significant effect on motivation, attitude, and intent, thereby confirming the role of communication strategies. The study adds to the extant studies on communication strategies, innovation implementation, and adoption of Information Technology for education. The managerial implications include assisting institutes, faculty, and administration in providing insight into appropriate tactics to encourage the implementation of educational innovations among students. The study will also be useful for the administrators/policymakers, for better comprehension of issues and finding solutions for innovation implementation.

Acceptance of Mobile Banking (MB) Framework in Pakistan – A Systematic Review

Technological advancement is one of the key sources of competitive advantage for modern-day businesses. Specifically, IT-based innovations in financial services such as mobile banking (MB) have revolutionized banking practices. However, in developing countries like Pakistan with decrepit infrastructure and less education, mobile banking has gained less attention. This study, through a systematic literature review, aims to assess the key factor of mobile banking acceptance. An electronic search was carried out incorporating 11 databases of majorly publish multidisciplinary articles. The outcomes are limited to the country of Pakistan and restricted by the year. 12 articles were identified as relevant to this particular systematic review based on the identified keywords. All the information is extracted from every single research article to impart data for the research title, author, journal name, methodology/model, year, study purpose, and major findings. The findings of this study suggest that despite mobile banking is gaining a foothold in Pakistan, ease of use, privacy, security, reliability, lower risk are the key factors that affect acceptance of mobile banking among customers. This study has some strong practical implications for the banking industry.

Integrated Technology Acceptance Model for the Evaluation of Agricultural Decision Support Systems

ABSTRACTThe evaluation process of agricultural Decision Support Systems (agDSSs) is mostly based on verification and validation criteria which reflect the viewpoint of one or a few persons, who are mostly involved in the development process. However, usability evaluation is regarded as very important criteria, which measures acceptance of IT-based innovations, involving as many people and reference groups as possible to produce more realistic results related to their adoption. To date, researchers have used many technology acceptance models (TAM) to measure likely adoption chances of innovation or technology. However, the frequency and scope of such studies in agDSSs are predominantly very low, which is attributed to the technical limitations of contemporary TAMs to consider social, organizational and environmental externalities of farmers’ perceptions, behaviors and attitudes beyond “technical aspects” in an explicit manner. Therefore, we are presenting a usability based evaluation framework for the agDSSs considering attitudes, mind-sets, social, organizational, environmental and cultural contexts beyond ‘technical perspective’ to help and support DSS practitioners with the key contributing factors. The proposed framework has been used to investigate the user’s acceptance of agDSS developed for Insect-Pest and Nutrient Management of apple (AIP&NM) in India.

Selected Papers from IEEE ICASI 2018

This Special Issue on “Selected Papers from IEEE ICASI 2018” includes excellent papers presented at the IEEE ICASI 2018 regarding the “applied system innovation” topic. Mechanical engineering and design innovations are both academic and practical engineering fields, which involve systematic technological materialization through scientific principles and engineering designs. Technological innovations in mechanical engineering include IT-based intelligent mechanical systems, mechanics and design innovations, and applied materials in nanosciences and nanotechnology. The aim is to encourage the attendees at the IEEE ICASI 2018 to publish their experimental and theoretical research relating to applied system innovation.

It-Based Usury Free Financial Innovations

Despite development and extension of different ways of financing in financial markets, encompassing Islamic and conventional financing, the mechanism of Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) of project financing both as borrowed and non-borrowed methods has not been considered at most. Moreover overall IT infrastructures development namely Real Gross Settlement System (RTGS), Automatic Clearing House (ACH), Scriptless Security Settlement System (SSSS) and International Bank Account Number (IBAN) for authentication process and the international meta bank network of Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) and also international integrated banking networks including the Society For Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and Interbank Information Transfer Network (Shetab), and other accomplished endeavors are not efficient in absorbing international contributions for project financing through foreign exchange funds in the different countries, satisfactory E-Payment mechanism in informative portal systems for investment projects are weak. In this way, the role of applying E-Payment systems for attracting foreign investment through retail resources mobilization and design of financial instruments with the capability of transacting in the secondary markets should be reconsidered. In this paper by having a glance at different types of investment project financing, we introduce a new project financing mechanism based on E-Payment with non-usury financial instruments to complete investment project financing chain in the form of Rastin Profit and Loss Sharing (PLS) banking.Sharia compliance of financing instruments in one side and accessibility in absorbing international retail foreign exchange sources on other side are two fundamental discussible items in this paper. In this way by designing a new system of "Non-Usury Scriptless Security Settlement System" (NSSSS) with non-usury mechanisms -avoiding legislative (Sharia) circumvention- can provide the two cited goals in designing non-usury financing instruments through IT-based non-usury financial innovations which includes of Rastin Certificates in Rastin PLS banking, and Non-Usury Bonds namely Rastin Swap Bonds.

Views on the Past, Present, and Future of Business and Information Systems Engineering

‘‘The times they are a-changin,’’ a famous song title by Bob Dylan, also applies to our profession and our subject of study. Information technology has always been a driver for innovation. The recent years, however, have seen IT-based innovations that truly impact everybody’s lives. Everything that can be digitized will be digitized, and this trend is continuing at an amazing speed. For a discipline that looks at the design and utilization of information systems these are exciting times. Yet, it is also a time full of challenges. While our discipline has much to contribute, it competes with other disciplines for topics and ideas. Also, the scope of topics studied has become broader and broader, and so have our methods. While initial work in Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) was often rooted in artificial intelligence, database systems, or operations research, the community has adopted new approaches to address new types of problems. Nowadays, we also have a strong group of academics working primarily with empirical methods or methods from microeconomics, to name just a few. This development towards a more multiparadigmatic discipline also had its challenges and there were controversial discussions along the way.

Managing the e-commerce disruption with IT-based innovations: Insights from strategic renewal perspectives

Transforming brick-and-mortar businesses into integrated online–offline models poses significant challenges for firms operationally and strategically. We conduct a comparative case study to investigate strategic renewals that result in the convergence of offline and online operations and strategies driven by information technology based innovations. We explore two strategic renewal paths used by our case firms: incremental resource-complementing renewal and discontinuous resource-substituting transformation. We illuminate the role of resource endowment in strategic renewal and its impact on the renewal path and explore the role of IT as operand or operant resource in strategic renewals and its impact on their success.

THE INFLUENCE OF CHANGE AGENTS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION IN FIRMS

The role of change agents in technological diffusion and innovation at firm level has been addressed in published literature mostly within the context of the developed countries. However, the involvement of change agents in the diffusion and adoption of IT-based innovations by small and medium-sized firms in the developing countries is largely unexplored. The main research questions are why and how management decisions to adopt and use IT are influenced (if any) by the interactions of key people in firms with several identified change agents. Case studies are used as the preferred approach to answer the research questions and to understand the qualitative aspects of IT diffusion at the level of the firm. The study concludes that IT diffusion in small and medium-sized firms expose mixed institutional influences. The mechanism by which change agents are involved in IT diffusion is also unique and is claimed to be different from that is generally found in other studies in this area. Some policy implications are proposed by this study.

Service Systems Engineering

Service systems engineering (SSE) focuses on the systematic design and development of service systems. Guided by a value proposition, service systems enable value co-creation through a configuration of actors and resources (often including a service architecture, technology, information, and physical artifacts), therefore constituting complex socio-technical systems. IS research can play a leading role in understanding and developing service systems. SSE calls for research leading to actionable design theories, methods and approaches for systematically designing, developing and piloting service systems, based upon understanding the underlying principles of service systems. Three major challenges have been identified: engineering service architectures, engineering service systems interactions, and engineering resource mobilization, i.e. extending the access to and use of resources by means of IT. Researching SSE is challenging. Assessing the models, methods, or artifacts of SSE often requires embedded research within existing or even novel service systems. Consequently, approaches such as piloting IT-based innovations, design research or action research are the most promising for SSE research. As an integrative discipline, IS is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of service systems with evidence-based design.

Service-Systems-Engineering

Service systems engineering (SSE) focuses on the systematic design and development of service systems. Guided by a value proposition, service systems enable value co-creation through a configuration of actors and resources (often including a service architecture, technology, information, and physical artifacts), therefore constituting complex socio-technical systems. IS research can play a leading role in understanding and developing service systems. SSE calls for research leading to actionable design theories, methods and approaches for systematically designing, developing and piloting service systems, based upon understanding the underlying principles of service systems. Three major challenges have been identified: engineering service architectures, engineering service systems interactions, and engineering resource mobilization, i.e. extending the access to and use of resources by means of IT. Researching SSE is challenging. Assessing the models, methods, or artifacts of SSE often requires embedded research within existing or even novel service systems. Consequently, approaches such as piloting IT-based innovations, design research or action research are the most promising for SSE research. As an integrative discipline, IS is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of service systems with evidence-based design.

Motivations underlying the adoption of ERP systems in healthcare organizations: Insights from online stories

To face their changing environment, a growing number of healthcare institutions are investing in ERP systems as their basic technological infrastructure, highlighting a phenomenon that recalls the earlier popularity of the ERP movement in the manufacturing and financial sectors. Based on the analysis of 180 stories published on ERP vendors' websites, the primary aim of this study is to identify, characterize and contextualize the motivations that lead to the adoption of these systems in healthcare organizations. Our findings first indicate that these motivations can be classified into six broad categories, namely technological, managerial-operational, managerial-strategic, clinical-operational, clinical-strategic, and financial. Moreover, three clusters of healthcare organizations were identified with regard to these motivations, and labelled as taking a "business", "clinical" or "institutional" view of ERP adoption decisions. Given the specificities of IT adoption in the healthcare sector, the importance of these results from a theoretical standpoint lies in filling a knowledge gap in both the ERP and health IT research domains. From a practical standpoint, these results are of interest for policy makers and healthcare managers that must deal with continuous increases in healthcare costs and major demographic changes, and thus need to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare services provided to patients through IT-based innovations.

Impacts of Individual Innovativeness on the Acceptance of IT-based Innovations in Health Care Fields

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study is to identify the role of individual innovation to demographic variables for determining IT adoption behaviors. This study also examines the effect of individual innovation on IT adoption behaviors across IT types.MethodsTo verify the invariant effect of individual innovativeness, two groups of persons working in the health care field were surveyed. The first study subject group was radiologists and their adoption of e-purchasing the second group was emergency rescue crews and their adoption of GPS.ResultsAdopter categories in innovations (ACI) as the measurement of individual innovation were a significant variable in both studies. Innovative adopters were more likely to use new IT tools than the majority of early adopters, and the early majority was more likely to adopt IT than the laggards. After merging the two data sets into one for testing the role of IT types as a moderator, the significance of ACI did not change, compared to the two separate analyses. In the merged data set, innovative adopters were 2.34 times more likely to be adopters than the early majority. The early majority was 2.32 times more likely to be adopters than laggards. Moreover, there were no moderating effects of IT types. Thus, there were no reversed adoption rates according to levels of ACI and demographic variables.ConclusionsACI has invariant effects on IT adoption behaviors regardless of IT types and demographic differences. To implement a new innovation, understanding individual innovativeness will provide more sophisticated implementation strategies for health care organizations and appropriate education programs for their employees.

Moving Health Information Technology Forward

Moving Health Information Technology Forward

The role of industry infrastructure in telehealth innovations: a multi-level analysis of a telestroke program

The information-intensive nature of the healthcare industry and the potential of information technology (IT) to reduce costs and improve quality of services have increased the focus on IT-based innovations. Yet, our ability to understand and manage how IT-based innovations unfold in the context of healthcare is still limited. In this paper, we apply Van de Ven's industry infrastructure framework to investigate a telehealth innovation that provides remote medical assistance to stroke patients in a network of collaborating hospitals. The resulting multi-level analysis contributes to understanding the innovation by revealing a highly complex process of interactions between key stakeholders and healthcare industry infrastructure. Despite the innovation's strong potential, the process is mainly push-driven with minimal pull from potential adopters. Moreover, the push is created by a small group of medical innovators with limited technological and financial resources and little infrastructural support. The study contributes with contextual insights into the telehealth innovation, suggesting complementary explanations of why the healthcare industry despite considerable investments continues to lag behind other industries in adoption of IT-based innovations. The study also adapts Van de Ven's framework by applying it to a single case of innovation rather than as originally conceived to several instances of an innovation within an industry. The analysis shows how some of the components of the framework were adapted to and interpreted in the context of telehealth innovations.

Implementation and use of an electronic health record: measuring relevance and participation in four hospitals

For more than a decade, there have been claims of the advantages of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Nevertheless the results of these IT-based innovations do not meet the expected improvements in healthcare performance. This paper investigates this phenomenon by studying relevance and participation during the implementation process of EHR in four different hospitals. From the case studies it can be concluded that the relevance of HER merely focuses on the availability of information at any time and any place. This employment of relevance does not meet end-users' expectations and is insufficient to accomplish the aspired improvements. The used participation approaches do not facilitate diffusion of EHR in hospitals. Participation from the start can help to leverage the relevance of the EHR, but the other way around more relevance can also help to motivate participation. A careful balance is needed to avoid a deadlock situation (No relevance, No participation).

Enabling agile adoption practices through network organizations

As distributed organizations increasingly rely on technological innovations to enhance organizational efficiency and competitiveness, interest in agile practices that enable adoption of information technology (IT) based innovations has grown. This study examines the influence of a network organization environment on the ability to develop agile adoption practices. An exploratory case study design was used to investigate the interactions between network structure, social information processing, organizational similarity (homophily), and absorptive capacity during the adoption of a large-scale IT system in two network organization environments within New York State. The data suggest that network organization characteristics and communication processes that reinforced social influence and supported knowledge transfer positively influenced adoption agility. We propose a model of agile adoption practices and discuss implications for the development of theory about network organization characteristics and capabilities to adopt IT-based innovations.

A Review of the Predictors, Linkages, and Biases in IT Innovation Adoption Research

We present a review and analysis of the rich body of research on the adoption and diffusion of IT-based innovations by individuals and organizations. Our review analyzes 48 empirical studies on individual and 51 studies on organizational IT adoption published between 1992 and 2003. In total, the sample contains 135 independent variables, eight dependent variables, and 505 relationships between independent and dependent variables. Furthermore, our sample includes both quantitative and qualitative studies. We were able to include qualitative studies because of a unique coding scheme, which can easily be replicated in other reviews. We use this sample to assess predictors, linkages, and biases in individual and organizational IT adoption research. The best predictors of individual IT adoption include Perceived Usefulness, Top Management Support, Computer Experience, Behavioral Intention, and User Support. The best predictors of IT adoption by organizations were Top Management Support, External Pressure, Professionalism of the IS Unit, and External Information Sources. At the level of independent variables, Top Management Support stands as the main linkage between individual and organizational IT adoption. But at an aggregate level, two collections of independent variables were good predictors of both individual and organizational IT adoption. These were innovation characteristics and organizational characteristics. Thus, we can consistently say that generic characteristics of the innovation and characteristics of the organization are strong predictors of IT adoption by both individuals and organizations. Based on an assessment of the predictors, linkages, and known biases, we prescribe 10 areas for further exploration.

Competition and IT-based Innovation in Banking Services

This article examines the dynamic relationships between competitive strategy and information technology (IT)-based product and process innovation in financial services. The study draws on detailed case studies of five IT-based innovations: Interbranch Online service, Automated Teller Machine service, Credit Card service, Remote Banking service, and Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale service. It examines the development of these innovations in the Thai banking industry from the mid-1960s. The results indicate the limitations of the Reverse Product Cycle model approach, and an alternative conceptual framework and a country-specific innovation model are proposed. Possible avenues for further research on innovation in services and service innovation are suggested, together with steps towards developing a unified approach to innovation and competition for both the service and manufacturing functions.

COMPETITION AND IT-BASED INNOVATION IN BANKING SERVICES

This article examines the dynamic relationships between competitive strategy and information technology (IT)-based product and process innovation in financial services. The study draws on detailed case studies of five IT-based innovations: Interbranch Online service, Automated Teller Machine service, Credit Card service, Remote Banking service, and Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale service. It examines the development of these innovations in the Thai banking industry from the mid-1960s. The results indicate the limitations of the Reverse Product Cycle model approach, and an alternative conceptual framework and a country-specific innovation model are proposed. Possible avenues for further research on innovation in services and service innovation are suggested, together with steps towards developing a unified approach to innovation and competition for both the service and manufacturing functions.

Innovation and Networks: Linking Diffusion and Implementation

This paper examines the appropriation of IT-based innovations within firms. It argues that such innovations represent a challenge to the tendency in the existing literature towards the analytical separation of diffusion and implementation as distinct theoretical domains. In contrast, this paper develops a more transcendent analysis of such innovations by focusing on the cognitive translations and appropriations which link idea generation, diffusion and implementation. This analysis identifies the processes linking wider inter-organisational diffusion networks and intra-firm distributions of expertise as playing a crucial role in the appropriation of innovation. We refer to these as processes of articulation: a formulation which leads to a reappraisal of the networking activities of boundary-spanning individuals.