Journal of Systems and Information Technology

Melin, Ulf; Axelsson, Karin

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-10-2015-0074

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the concept of action by addressing actions and roles in the practice of action research, illustrated by dilemmas in an action research project on information systems development in public sector. The main ambition with action research is being able to solve organisational problems through intervention and to contribute to scientific knowledge. The main emphasis has so far been on the “research part”. Here the authors focus on the “action part” of action research to generate rigorous research, to solve local problems and to deal with evident dilemmas in action research.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative case study. The empirical illustrations of this paper originate from an action research project that focused the two e-service development initiatives analysed below. The analysis is structured using key aspects and phases proposed by Avison et al. (2001). As a result of the analysis, the concept of action is elaborated. The action elements action, actor, motive, space and time are analysed together with different roles. This goes beyond the existing action research literature.FindingsThe conclusions show that there is a need to understand actions and roles within action research projects – not separating action from research. Research is also seen as action. The practice of action research is also discussed as context-bounded interactive social action: action research as a recurrent, interactive and dynamic activity. It is also identified that the understanding of roles, actions and interaction can help handle dilemmas in action research.Research Limitations/implicationsThe authors contribute to the body of knowledge concerning action research in the information systems research field and in general by exploring the need to study the concept of action (e.g. situations and elements), to be explicit concerning the different phases, roles and responsibilities and management of different dilemmas in action research. A limitation of this study is that the inter-organisational development character in this study adds an extra dimension into the practice of actions research only partially highlighted. Another limitation is focus on public agencies. However, this is not critical for the results on action elements and the action research dilemmas that are studied.Practical ImplicationsThe understanding of roles, actions and interaction can solve the dilemmas and challenges linked to the practice of action research in the information systems field, but such understanding can help discover and handle dilemmas in action research.Originality/valueThe originality in this research is an illustration of and a perspective of action research as a context-bounded interactive social action: action research as a recurrent, interactive and dynamic activity. The value is that this knowledge can help handle dilemmas in action research.

Omotayo, Funmilola Olubunmi; Babalola, Samuel Oyelami

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-02-2016-0009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing knowledge sharing (KS) among information and communication technology (ICT) artisans in Nigeria by adopting the social exchange and social capital theories.Design/methodology/approachSurvey research design was adopted. Convenience and snowball sampling techniques were used to select the respondents. In total, 285 copies of questionnaire were distributed, of which 214 copies were considered useful for data analysis, giving a 75.09 per cent response rate.FindingsThe results show that the gender of the artisans, perceived benefits, social identification, shared language and goals had positive significant and relationships with KS except social identification where the relationship was negative.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings and conclusion from this paper are subjected to a number of limitations. Because the population was limited to a small population and the study adopted convenience and snowball techniques, the results cannot be generalised to all ICT artisans in Nigeria.Practical implicationsThe paper confirms the role of social exchange and social capital theories in interpreting individual’s behaviour in KS and provides useful insights on how to implement good KS practices among the artisans.Social implicationsThis paper could assist policymakers in promoting and implementing KS practices among professionals and quasi-professionals who contribute to the gross domestic product of the country.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first pieces of empirical research on KS among information technology artisans in Nigeria that used the social exchange and social capital theories.

Bothin, Antje; Clough, Paul

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-07-2015-0064

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a new supervised machine learning study on the prediction of meeting participant’s personal note-taking from spoken dialogue acts uttered shortly before writing.Design/methodology/approachThis novel approach of providing cues for finding important meeting events that would be worth recording in a meeting summary looks at temporal overlaps of multiple people’s note-taking. This research uses data of 124 meetings taken from the AMI meeting corpus.FindingsThe results show that several machine learning methods that the authors compared were able to classify the data significantly better than a random approach. The best model, decision trees with feature selection, achieved 70 per cent accuracy for the binary distinction writing for any number of participants simultaneously or no writing, whereas the performance for a more fine-grained distinction of the number of participants taking notes showed only about 30 per cent accuracy.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest that meeting participants take personal notes in accordance with the utterance of previously uttered speech acts, particularly dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. However, further research is necessary to examine other domains and to determine in what way this behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.Practical implicationsThe reader of an Information Systems (IS) journal would be interested in this paper because the work described and the findings gained could lead to the development of novel information systems that facilitate the work for businesses and individuals. Innovative meeting capture and retrieval applications, satisfying automatic summaries of important meeting points and sophisticated note-taking tools that suggest content automatically could make people’s daily lives more convenient in the future.Social implicationsThere are wider implications in terms of productivity and efficiency. Business value is increased for the organisation, as human knowledge is built more or less automatically. There are also cognitive and social implications for individuals and possibly an impact on the society as a whole. It is also important for globalisation, social media and mobile devices.Originality/valueThe topic is new and original, as there has not been much research on it yet. Similar work was carried out recently (Murray, 2015; Bothin and Clough 2014). This is why it is relevant to an IS journal and interesting for the reader. In particular, dialogue acts about disfluencies and assessments appear to influence the note-taking activities. This behaviour is helpful as a feature source for automatic meeting summarisation, which is useful for more efficiently satisfying people’s information needs about meeting contents.

Carroll, Noel; Richardson, Ita

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-07-2015-0061

PurposeConnected Health is an emerging and rapidly developing field never before witnessed across the healthcare sector. It has the potential to transform healthcare service systems by increasing its safety, quality and overall efficiency. However, as healthcare technologies or medical devices continuously rely more on software development, one of the core challenges is examining how Connected Health is regulated – often impacting Connected Health innovation. The purpose of this paper is to present an understanding of how Connected Health is regulated. Many of these regulatory developments fall under “medical devices”, giving rise to Software-as-a-Medical Device (SaaMD).Design/methodology/approachThrough an extensive literature review, this paper demystifies Connected Health regulation. It presents the outcome of expert discussions which explore the key regulatory developments in the context of Connected Health to provide a practical guide to understanding how regulation can potentially shape healthcare innovation.FindingsSeveral key issues are identified, and the authors present a comprehensive overview of regulatory developments relating to Connected Health with a view to support the continued growth of IT-enabled healthcare service models. The authors also identify the key challenges in Connected Health and identify areas for future research.Originality/valueA key outcome of this research is a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges that regulation and standards present to Connected Health. Furthermore, this research is of critical importance in a first attempt towards recognising the impact of regulation and standards compliance in Connected Health.

Standing, Oliver; Standing, Susan; Kordt, Eric

2016 Journal of Systems and Information Technology

doi: 10.1108/JSIT-01-2016-0002

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between project failure and success and an individual’s attributional style and level of seniority. Information technology (IT)-related projects are often complex because of the need to work with a range of stakeholders and satisfy diverse expectations, and thus projects often fail.Design/methodology/approachA case study of a large government organisation was undertaken: interviews and focus groups were conducted and used as primary data for qualitative analysis.FindingsLine and executive managers have the tendency to increasingly make more pessimistic attributions than support workers, believing that failure was likely to persist in the future because of the inability to influence management and stakeholders. Support workers have the tendency to be more optimistic than line and executive managers and this has implications for self-serving evaluation practices.Originality/valueThe application of the attribution theory provides insights into project success and failure and the discrepancies between line managers’ and employees’ job satisfaction.