De Marco

Information Systems: Crossroads for Organization, Management, Accounting and Engineering

This book examines a wide range of issues that characterize the current IT based innovation trends in organizations. It contains a collection of research papers focusing on themes of growing interest in the field of Information Systems, Organization Studies, Management, Accounting and Engineering. The book offers a multidisciplinary view on Information Systems with the aim of disseminating academic knowledge. It would be particularly relevant to IT practitioners such as information systems managers and IT consultants.The 12 sections cover a broad spectrum of topics including: eServices in Public and Private Sectors; Organizational Change and the Impact of ICT in Public and Private Sectors; Information and Knowledge Management; Human-Computer Interaction; Information Systems, Innovation Transfer, and New Business Models; Business Intelligence Systems, their Strategic Role and Organizational Impacts; New Ways to Work and Interact with the Internet; IS, IT and Security; Blending Design and Behavioral Research in Information Systems; Professional Skills, Certification of Curricula, Online Education and Communities; IS Design, IS Development, Metrics and Compliance; ICT4LAW: Information and communication technologies to help firms, public administrations, legislators and citizens to operate in a highly regulated world.The content of each section is based on a selection of original double-blind peer reviewed contributions.

Knowledge sharing and value co-creation: designing a service system for fostering inter-generational cooperation

This paper highlights the necessity of knowledge transfer and sharing between young and old people, to avoid skills and expertises loss by the organizations and for co-creating value. The paper depicts how the use of a digital platform providing a common place in which people act and interact could facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience between these two generations, thus fostering value co-creation. A case study describing the “5020 project” is presented in which this kind of a digital platform is developed. In this scenario, mixed work groups, composed by young and old people, are created, in which people, working together, share the knowledge acquired in the past (respectively at school and on the job by experiences), co-creating value and providing good solutions to requests of enterprises.

Healthcare and the Co-creation of Value: Qualifying the Service Roles of Informal Caregivers

The study advances the debate on the co-creation of value in healthcare by treating the informal caregivers as a key organizational resource for the providers. Using the Dialogue, Access, Risk, and Transparency (DART) model developed by Prahalad and Ramaswamy as an interpretative key, this qualitative paper frames the role of the informal caregivers within the multiple experiences of value co-creation in which they are engaged. The central argument is that the informal caregiver performs three intersecting key roles: patient’s advocate, system navigator and coordinator of care.

The Networked Society

This issue of Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) presents a selection of the best papers presented at the 23rd European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in Münster, Germany. The conference received 913 submissions to 31 tracks from 691 authors representing 59 countries. The widespread origins of the papers reflected the theme of the conference, ‘The networked society’. The term ‘networked society’, as characterized by the ECIS 2015 organizers, has gained common currency in both academic and popular discourse. The concept depicts and promotes a vision of a society that is thoroughly interwoven with information and communication infrastructures, which (re-)shape the practices and structures that constitute all facets of social life. The emphasis of research on the networked society, then, is that on the emergence of new modes of ‘connectedness’ and associated economic, political, and social/cultural transformations (Castells and Cardoso 2005; Castells 2004). A notable feature of much of the ‘networked society’ discourse is the predominance of benign – even utopian – visions of the future. For example, technology companies and social commentators have enthusiastically embraced the concept as a way to emphasize the rich opportunities for all in a connected world. In short, the assumption is that ‘connections will engender opportunities’, with implicit promises of a progressive march toward the digital ‘good life’ of a more prosperous, stimulating, and benevolent society. This socio-technical development has changed how organizations and individuals innovate with technology (Yoo et al. 2012; Tumbas et al. 2015). The term ‘digital innovation’ emphasizes that information technology is used to innovate organizations’ products, services, and business models, and the term ‘digital transformation’ characterizes the disruptive changes in all areas of our social and economic life. The papers presented at ECIS 2015 addressed many aspects of the networked society, and all track chairs were asked to nominate their best papers for inclusion in this special issue. After a competitive review process, four papers were selected. ‘‘Understanding Socio-Technical Impacts Arising from Software-as-a-Service Usage in Companies: A Mixed Method Analysis on Individual Level Data’’ by Andreas Jede and Frank Teuteberg, Accounting and Information Systems, University of Osnabrück, examines the effects of Software as a Service (SaaS) on the perceptions of IT professionals in internal IT departments. The authors design and test a quantitative research model and apply it to investigate four SaaS cases from the perspectives of internal IT professionals and end users. They deduce that, with increasing SaaS usage, instability emerges in IT professionals’ perceptions of their individual job outcomes, and they provide support for management to help IT Prof. Dr. J. v. Brocke (&) Institute of Information Systems, Hilti Chair of Business Process Management, University of Liechtenstein, Fürst-Franz-JosefStrasse, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein e-mail: jan.vom.brocke@uni.li

Extensiveness of Manufacturing and Organizational Processes: An Empirical Study on Workers Employed in the European SMEs

To enhance the competitiveness and the turnover of businesses in the fast-paced world of today means adopting the emerging Automation & Robotics (A&R) equipment that, in turn, require the upskilling and training of employees to enable effective implementation of the business processes. This poses a significant challenge to manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which often lack the funds and human resources to invest in staff training, and translates into a distinct need to provide comprehensive A&R upskilling and training programs in the form of smart learning solutions designed to enable SME personnel to pursue their training goals in a flexible, customizable and easy-to-access way. The paper sheds light on the perceived upskilling requirements of SME workers and the broad scope of A&R systems training materials developed by the innovative methodology of ARIALE smart learning system.

Innovative Security Techniques to Prevent Attacks on Wireless Payment on Mobile Android OS

Mobile technologies are increasingly pervading a substantial portion of everyday life. In particular, the economic sector of consumers and private sales has shown a very high rate of utilization of mobile applications. Mobile payments are no exception, and the economic development relies more and more on mobile technologies. Bank institutions and financial firms are privileged targets for cyber attacks and organized crime, exploiting vulnerabilities of smart mobile devices in particular for host card emulation wireless payments. The research analysis was based on mobile platform Android and identified ten original (novel) controls that can avoid possible attacks on payment transactions and/or privacy. The study has practical implications as practitioners and organizations, like banks, shall control the risks associated with the taxonomy of tamper IDs. Organizational implications can be regarded as the need for banks to look into software development for mobile applications.

Health Information Technology and Caregiver Interaction: Building Healthy Ecosystems

This qualitative study explores the widely recognized role of the informal caregivers (ICGs) as key co-producers in the delivery of effective and sustainable healthcare systems. The central argument is that to enhance the quality of care in non-clinical settings and the healthcare ecosystem as a whole, developers of Health Information Technology (HIT) need to harness the knowledge and experiences of the ICGs to better align their products to practice. The paper has two aims: to improve the understandability of informal caregivers’ role in non-traditional healthcare settings, and to identify and formulate valuable guidelines for the development of “fit-for-use” HIT solutions that acknowledge the needs of the ICGs.

Organizational Impact on Software Development of eServices Techniques

New Software Development techniques with respect to cloud computing and eServices had modified IS architectures which were well established and consolidated in the past. The new methodologies of (software, micro/e) “Services” has pushed towards the adoption of software development organization independent from traditional tiered-architecture with the result of reducing both scale-up and down times as well as interruption times due to migration to different platforms. The eServices development organization relays on MicroServices architecture so that it is decomposing the legacy architecture in micro-components, each one with an independent life-cycle but interconnected and correlated, i.e. eServices. Each eService is hosted within a single container which has a proper software lifecycle and with minimal set of executable operating system libraries. The analysis goes into details about the structure and the development of eServices with MicroServices architecture. The paper discusses the new technological tendencies under the lens of an Organizational approach.