Dana Schwieger

Incorporating soft skills into accounting and MIS curricula

Faculty face many challenges both in and outside the confines of the university setting. They must increase the number of topics and the depth in which the material is covered while simultaneously reducing the number of required degree hours. In addition, employers have acknowledged an overall decline of soft skills among todays graduates. Further, faculty must address their material coverage for the multi-tasking skills of todays college students. In this article, the authors address the concerns voiced by the employers of college graduates regarding the apparent absence of soft skills competence and suggest an assurance of learning model for incorporating these skills into curricula.

Internet Usage Monitoring in the Workplace: Its Legal Challenges and Implementation Strategies

ABSTRACT With the introduction of any new technology, there is also the potential for its misuse, yet no U.S. federal or state statute currently prohibits employers from monitoring their electronic workplace. In this article, we review surveillance technologies and discuss the related federal and state laws along with U.S. judicial decisions. Implementation strategies to help employers defuse or avoid the negative aspects of monitoring are provided.

Applying Adaptive Structuration Theory to Health Information Systems Adoption: A Case Study

Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) is rapidly becoming an important theoretical paradigm for comprehending the impact of advanced information technologies. In this paper, a modified AST model was designed to illustrate the changing inter-relationships among the variables affecting the adoption and application of a new technology into a medical organization setting. Using findings from a case study conducted over a 10-month period, the authors apply the case to the model to illustrate the complex interactions between medical billing technology and organizational processes. As the organization attempted to install and implement the new system, they found that in order to maintain daily operations, they would have to modify and adapt several aspects of the organization, technology, and operations. As the system was slowly integrated into operations and the organization’s needs evolved through the adaptation process, the study, in turn, found that different iterations of the model could emphasize different structures. The case illustrated that the capacity to manage health information systems (HIS) often requires the organization to prioritize its needs and focus its energies on a critical structure while temporarily disregarding others until the primary healthcare processes are under control.