Edward J. Szewczak

Business Associates in the National Health Information Network: Implications for Medical Information Privacy

This article examines the role of the business associate of healthcare providers (BAHP) in the National Health Information Network. Current Health Insurance Portability and Accountability legislation has little to say about BAHPs and their potential impact on medical information privacy. For the good of the business enterprise, managers who are BAHPs or who supervise BAHPs need to be aware of the potential pitfalls of ignoring medical information privacy and take a proactive stance in protecting medical information privacy within the National Health Information Network. Among the approaches that managers can adopt include creating legal contracts between a business and BAHPs, proactively adopting more effective transmission security technologies, and insuring that BAHPs properly dispose of medical information after their use. Such proactive approaches will help to insure that the business is protected against a serious data breach that may result in popular and/or legal challenges to the business.

The Human Side of Information Technology

From the Publisher: The influence of information technology is being felt throughout modern organizations, from the senior management level to line management to various clerical and support group levels. As IT has grown in sophistication along a broad range of technical aspects and features, organizational personnel have witnessed changes in organizational life and ways of doing business that have transformed their thinking about what it means to contribute effectively and efficiently to the well-being of their organizations. The Human Side of Information Technology Management provides valuable insight into many of the issues of the human side of information technology management, a side of IT impact that many experts feel has been underestimated or pushed aside by too much concern given to the technological side of IT. Read this book and learn about: user satisfaction with information systems; impacts of office automation on employees; uses of computer-generated communication; the role of national culture and IT; and many more human-related issues of IT. Edward J. Szewczak is a professor and Chair of the MCIS Department at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He received a Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. His information systems research has been published in Data Base, European Journal of Operational Research, Information & Management, Information Resources Management Journal, Journal of Management Systems, Journal of Microcomputer Systems Management, Journal of MIS, Omega, and Simulation & Games as well as in a number of readings texts and scholarly conference proceedings. He has also co-edited two books of readings entitled Management Impacts of Information Technology: Perspectives on Organizational Change(1991) and Growth :The Human Side of Information Technology Management (1996), and Measuring Information Technology Investment Payoff: A Contemporary Approach (1999) published by Idea Group Publishing of Hershey, PA. He is currently an associate editor of the Information Resources Management Journal. Mehdi Khosrowpour is currently an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Penn State Harrisburg. He is the editor-in-charge of the Information Resources Management Journal, the annals of Cases on Information Technology Application and Management in Organizations and Information Management and consulting editor of the Information Technology Newsletter. In addition, he also serves on the editorial review boards of six other international information systems journals and has authored/edited 10 books and more than 30 articles published in various scholarly and professional journals.

Validation of a model to support the decision to transfer management control systems

Abstract Managers in both Japan and the United States have actively pursued the issue of transferring management techniques such as kanban and quality circles from one culture to another. However, the issue of the transferability of the management control systems (MCS) which are assumed by these techniques is often neglected or dismissed as easily accomplished. This study used data gathered from more than 1000 managers and workers in large manufacturing/construction companies in Japan and the United States to develop a mathematical model using two-group discriminant analysis which can be used to support the decision to transfer a MCS between the two cultures. Our analysis suggests that a MCS should be transferred only after relevant cultural values in both the importing organization and the exporting organization are carefully recognized and evaluated for a high degree of congruence. Judicious use of the model by managers pondering the prospect of MCS transfer will help to determine the degree to which their own organization exhibits such congruence. This paper details the methodology used to develop the model. It focuses on the steps taken to ensure both the technical and organizational validity of the model in light of the importance of cultural congruence.