Benjamin B. M. Shao

The relationship between user participation and system success: a simultaneous contingency approach

Abstract The relationship between user participation and information system (IS) success has drawn attention from researchers for some time. It is assumed that strong participation of future users in the design of IS would lead to successful outcomes in terms of more IS usage, greater user acceptance, and increased user satisfaction. However, in spite of this, much of the empirical research so far has been unable to demonstrate its benefits. This paper examines the participation–success relationship in a broader context, where the effects of user participation and two other factors, user attitudes and user involvement, on system success occur simultaneously. Other contingency variables considered here are: system impact, system complexity, and development methodology. The theoretical framework and the associated hypotheses are empirically tested by a survey of 32 organizations. Empirical results corroborate the positive link between user participation and user satisfaction and provide evidence on the interplay between user attitudes and user involvement.

Technical efficiency analysis of information technology investments: a two-stage empirical investigation

Abstract One of the difficult challenges facing management and researchers today is how to justify costly investments in information technology (IT). This paper presents an approach to investigating the effects of IT on technical efficiency in a firm’s production process through a two-stage analytical study with a firm-level data set. In the first stage, a nonparametric frontier method of data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed to measure technical efficiency scores for the firms. The second stage then utilizes the Tobit model to regress the efficiency scores upon the corresponding IT investments of the firms. Strong statistical evidence is presented to confirm that IT exerts a significant favorable impact on technical efficiency and in turn, gives rise to the productivity growth that was claimed by recent studies of IT economic value. Practical implications are then drawn from the empirical evidence.

Measuring the value of information technology in technical efficiency with stochastic production frontiers

Abstract With the vast amounts of resources being invested in information technology (IT), the issue of how to measure and manage the impact of IT on organizational performance has received increased attention. Based on the production theory in microeconomics, this paper investigates the relationship between IT investments and technical efficiency in the firms production process. The application of stochastic production frontiers to a comprehensive firm-level panel data set provides us with empirical evidence that IT has a significantly positive effect on technical efficiency and, hence, contributes to the productivity growth in organizations, claimed by some earlier studies with the same data set. The stochastic production frontiers considered include the popular Cobb–Douglas function and the more flexible translog function. Both specifications of production technology lead to the same conclusion. Managerial implications derived from the empirical results are also presented.

The business value of information technology and inputs substitution: the productivity paradox revisited

The business value of information technology (IT) is an extremely important but highly controversial issue that has sparked a great deal of research during the past two decades. Closely related to the issue are the productivity paradox of information systems and the substitutability of IT stock for both traditional capital and labor. Numerous studies have been undertaken to either explain or dispel the paradox. This paper represents one significant extension to previous work and is a further effort to jointly investigate the business value issue, the paradox, and the potential of the substitution between IT capital and ordinary capital and labor, by estimating the IT business value in terms of the impact of IT on technical efficiency, based on the constant elasticity of substitution (known as CES) stochastic production frontier model, at three levels: firm, industry, and sector. The major findings include: the relationship between technical efficiency and IT investment is not robust with respect to the specifications of production frontiers; the productivity paradox is still existent, inconsistent with conventional wisdom, IT has substantial impacts on the five parameters associated with the CES production process; IT stock, traditional capital, and traditional labor are not pairwise substitutable; IT stock appears to be as important as capital, but it is not possible to use IT stock to replace the role of labor entirely; decreasing returns to scale are found irrespective of the levels of IT investments, and technical efficiency tends to decrease as IT investments increase; the industry-level analysis suggests that IT capital is more important for the services industries than for the manufacturing industries; and the sector analysis seems to indicate that the services sector is just slightly less technically efficient than the manufacturing sector.

Electronic Medical Records, Nurse Staffing, and Nurse-Sensitive Patient Outcomes: Evidence from California Hospitals, 1998–2007

OBJECTIVE To estimate the effects of electronic medical records (EMR) implementation on medical-surgical acute unit costs, length of stay, nurse staffing levels, nursing skill mix, nurse cost per hour, and nurse-sensitive patient outcomes. DATA SOURCES Data on EMR implementation came from the 1998-2007 HIMSS Analytics Databases. Data on nurse staffing and patient outcomes came from the 1998-2007 Annual Financial Disclosure Reports and Patient Discharge Databases of the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD). METHODS Longitudinal analysis of an unbalanced panel of 326 short-term, general acute care hospitals in California. Marginal effects estimated using fixed effects (within-hospital) OLS regression. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS EMR implementation was associated with 6-10 percent higher cost per discharge in medical-surgical acute units. EMR stage 2 increased registered nurse hours per patient day by 15-26 percent and reduced licensed vocational nurse cost per hour by 2-4 percent. EMR stage 3 was associated with 3-4 percent lower rates of in-hospital mortality for conditions. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that advanced EMR applications may increase hospital costs and nurse staffing levels, as well as increase complications and decrease mortality for some conditions. Contrary to expectation, we found no support for the proposition that EMR reduced length of stay or decreased the demand for nurses.

Measurement and sources of overall and input inefficiencies: Evidences and implications in hospital services

Abstract Traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) focuses exclusively on measuring the overall efficiency of a decision making unit (DMU). Yet, variables that have explanatory power for the overall operational inefficiency of a DMU may not necessarily be the same as those that affect its individual input inefficiencies. On many occasions, variables that explain the overall inefficiency of a DMU can be inconsistent or incongruent with those that cause its individual input inefficiencies. Therefore, we conjecture that an overall inefficiency score alone may have limited value for decision making since such a process requires fine-tuning and adjustments of specific input factors of the DMU in order to maximize its overall efficiency. In this paper, the utilization and financial data of a set of hospitals in California is used to empirically test the above conjecture. Our study has several important contributions and practical implications. First, we fine-tune previous efficiency measures on hospitals by refining input and output measures. Second, with variables on organization, management, demographics, and market competition, we identify specific factors associated with a hospitals overall operational inefficiency. More importantly, by decomposing the overall DEA operational inefficiency score into different individual input inefficiencies (including slacks), we further identify specific variables that cause individual input inefficiency. Third, significant differences are observed among factors of the overall inefficiency and individual input inefficiencies. These findings have important implications for identifying congruent factors for performance standard setting and evaluation; it also provides invaluable information for guiding effective resource allocation and better decision making for improving hospital operational efficiency.

The impact of offshore outsourcing on IT workers in developed countries

Examining the global implications of outsourcing for IT workers.

E-business differentiation through value-based trust

For e-business, location is irrelevant and competition is intense. To succeed in this environment, organizations must find new ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. One way to achieve e-business differentiation is to foster trust by building a perception of value congruence and avoiding a perception of value conflict. We explore how value congruence contributes to and how value conflict decreases trust in e-businesses. An experiment was conducted to examine the respective impacts of value congruence and value conflict on trust in an e-commerce setting. Our results show that, for e-businesses, value congruence has an enabling effect on trust while value conflict reduces trust. Such effects are strong enough to suggest that value congruence can be employed as an effective way for e-businesses to differentiate themselves while creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Managerial implications are drawn from our results.

Electronic Medical Records, Nurse Staffing, and Nurse-Sensitive Patient Outcomes: Evidence From the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators

Electronic medical records (EMR) have the potential to improve nursing care in the hospital setting. This study estimated the association of EMR implementation with nurse staffing levels, skill mix, contract/agency percent, and nurse-sensitive patient outcomes in U.S. hospitals. Data on nurse staffing and patient outcomes came from the 2004-2008 National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators. Data on EMR implementation came from the 2004-2008 HIMSS Analytics Database. The authors conducted a longitudinal analysis of an unbalanced panel of 3,048 medical/surgical units in 509 short-term, general acute care hospitals. EMR implementation was associated with lower total nurse hours per patient day, higher Registered Nurse percent and contract/agency percent, and higher adverse patient events in the short term. EMR may create a skill bias toward higher-skilled nurses. As more advanced EMR systems diffuse into practice, managers and policy makers should consider potential negative associations of EMR implementation with patient safety.

Sharing information and building trust through value congruence

This study explores how value congruence contributes to the formation of trust in e-businesses, and how trust and value congruence influence consumers to share personal information. It is hypothesized that the perceived values of organizations regarding moral, social, environmental and political causes can have an effect on the trusting beliefs of e-commerce consumers and their willingness to disclose private personal information. A total of 775 subjects rated their perceived value congruence with organizations, their trusting beliefs, and the types of information they would be willing to disclose. This study finds that value congruence not only plays a role in mediating the trust of consumers for the organizations, but it also has a strong effect on determining their willingness to disclose personal information. In some cases, the influence of value congruence is greater than that of trust, even though trust has been touted in the literature as one of the most important factors in e-commerce. This research expands prior work by using structural equation modeling to test the relative strength of the effect of value congruence on each dimension of trust and the overall trust level, as well as its direct effect on behavioral intentions in terms of information sharing for non-profit and for-profit organizations.