Janis L. Gogan

A collaborative network for first responders: Lessons from the CapWIN case

Abstract It is increasingly important for government agencies to collaborate across jurisdictional and functional boundaries. Interorganizational systems supporting interagency collaboration must accommodate a wide range of factors from the external environment and participating organizations as part of their design and operation. This paper presents the findings from a case study of CapWIN, a collaborative network created to enable first responders to share information across jurisdictional and functional boundaries as they work together during emergencies and other critical events. The study examines how aspects of the external environment and the agency context impeded or facilitated the CapWIN collaborative network and the interorganizational system (IOS) that supports it. We identify factors affecting information sharing and collaborative processes, and describe how these factors interact to enable and constrain an IOS. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research on the interplay of environmental, organizational, and technical aspects of interagency collaboration networks as they evolve over time.

Barriers to Interorganizational Information Sharing in e-Government: A Stakeholder Analysis

Government agencies often face trade-offs in developing initiatives that address a public good given competing concerns of various constituent groups. Efforts to construct data warehouses that enable data mining of citizens’ personal information obtained from other organizations (including sister agencies) create a complex challenge, since privacy concerns may vary across constituent groups whose priorities diverge from agencies’ e-government goals. In addition to privacy concerns, participating government agencies’ priorities related to the use of the information may also be in conflict. This article reports on a case study of the Integrated Non-Filer Compliance System used by the California Franchise Tax Board for which data are collected from federal, state, and municipal agencies and other organizations in a data mining application that aims to identify residents who under-report income or fail to file tax returns. This system pitted the public good (ensuring owed taxes are paid) against citizen concerns about privacy. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the authors propose a typology of four stakeholder groups (data controllers, data subjects, data providers, and secondary stakeholders) to address privacy concerns and argue that by ensuring procedural fairness for the data subjects, agencies can reduce some barriers that impede the successful adoption of e-government applications and policies. The article concludes that data controllers can reduce adoption and implementation barriers when e-government data mining applications rely on data shared across organizational boundaries: identify legitimate stakeholders and their concerns prior to implementation; enact procedures to ensure procedural fairness when data are captured, shared, and used; explain to each constituency how the data mining application helps to ensure distributive fairness; and continue to gauge stakeholders’ responses and ongoing concerns as long as the application is in use.

Reinvention of interorganizational systems: A case analysis of the diffusion of a bio-terror surveillance system

Innovation diffusion theory proposed that adopters—whether individuals or organizations—sometimes reinvent an innovation as they gain experience using it. Reinvention can enhance (or impede) the likelihood of an IS innovation’s acceptance and further diffusion. This paper reports on a case study of BioSense, an interorganizational system that was designed as an early detection tool for bio-terror attacks and subsequently modified to better serve this need as well as to operate as a public health system for pinpointing geographic clusters of dangerous/acute disease outbreaks. By examining the interplay among the political and organizational dynamics and technical properties of the BioSense system, we shed light on processes affecting reinvention in an interorganizational context. We discuss our findings in light of theories of the diffusion and reinvention of innovations. We use Rogers’ (1995) list of factors supporting reinvention to structure the discussion of the fidelity and uniformity of the innovation within the processes it supports in adopting health services organizations.

RFID and interorganisational collaboration: political and administrative challenges

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a powerful new technology which, in combination with other information technologies, offers great potential for supporting interorganisational collaboration. The case study reported herein suggests that organisations adopting RFID will need to change their technical and organisational processes and make accommodations in response to political and environmental constraints. The study focused on an initiative undertaken by the Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium (WLIC). Through it, a large number of disparate organisations are working together to utilise RFID to track livestock movements, thereby helping to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of contagious diseases. This study demonstrates how political and administrative challenges interacted with technical aspects of the interorganisational system design. Suggestions are offered for further research on the assimilation of RFID and other emerging technologies in interorganisational contexts.

PEDIATRIC CANCER SURVIVAL AND MARRIAGE: Issues Affecting Adult Adjustment

Of 36 men and women, now aged 21 or older, who were treated for cancer as children, 20 have married. As part of a long-term follow-up, 13 of their spouses were interviewed about the effects of cancer on the patient and on their marriage. Comparison of patients physical limitations, visible impairments, and psychiatric adjustment ratings indicated significant differences between patients who have married or become engaged and those who have not married.

Handoff processes, information quality and patient safety: A trans‐disciplinary literature review

Purpose – Key findings from recent and relevant studies on patient safety and clinical handoffs are summarized and analyzed. After briefly reviewing process management and accounting control theory, the aim of this paper is to discuss how these latter two disciplines can be combined to further improve patient safety in handoffs.Design/methodology/approach – A literature review on studies of patient safety, clinical processes and clinical handoffs was conducted in leading medical, quality, and information systems journals.Findings – This paper issues a call for research using a trans‐disciplinary methodology to shed new light on information quality issues in clinical handoff processes, which in turn should improve patient safety.Research limitations/implications – The literature review employed systematic, heuristic, iterative and practical criteria for identifying and selecting papers, trading off completeness for multi‐disciplinarity. No prior empirical patient safety studies combined process management ...

Death Anxiety in Normal Children and Adolescents

Instruments devised to measure death anxiety, depression, and manifest anxiety in adults were administered to 75 junior high-school students, 111 senior high-school students, and 38 adults in an effort ot determine the nature of any developmental differences among these groups. A number of significant differences were noted, with the senior high-school students showing greater anxiety, depression, and death anxiety than the other groups. These results are discussed in the context of tasks of adolescent development, and an item analysis of the death anziety questionnaire is presented. Developmental differences in the origin of death anxiety are related to previous studies of death anxiety in adults.

Punctuation and Path Dependence: Examining a Vertical IT Standard‐Setting Process

This paper reports on a longitudinal interpretive case study of the Financial Services Technology Consortium eCheck project, and the failed attempts to promote eCheck and an enabling technology, FSML, as vertical IT standards. Based on interviews and archival data, a series of linked technical decisions are examined, covering a seven‐year period. Early technical decisions put the design teams work on a technical trajectory, which they chose not to abandon, contributing to the failure of these proposed standards. We discuss the evidence in light of technology evolution theory and offer suggestions for future research on vertical standards setting.

Coming to Terms with End-User Systems Integration

Abstract Despite the phenomenal growth of end-user computing, managers and planners have lit-tie to guide them when developing integrated systems for the future of their organizations. This article tackles the problem of systems integration at its roots in organizational theory and formulates a practical framework for end-user planning.

Medication errors, handoff processes and information quality: A community hospital case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how clinical handoffs affect clinical information quality (IQ) and medication administration quality.Design/methodology/approach – A case study was conducted in a US hospital. The authors applied a business process management (BPM) perspective to analyze an end‐to‐end medication administration process and related handoffs, and accounting control theory (ACT) to examine the impact of handoffs on IQ and medication errors.Findings – The study reveals how handoffs can lead to medication errors (by passing information that is not complete, accurate, timely or valid) and can help reduce errors (by preventing, detecting and correcting information quality flaws or prior clinical mistakes).Research limitations/implications – The paper reports on one case study on one hospital unit. Future studies can investigate the impact of clinical IQ on patient safety across the multitude of health information technologies (e.g. computerized provider order entry (CPOE), electro...