Massimo Franco

Information technology repositories and knowledge management processes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the impact of information technology repositories (ITR) in the implementation of KM processes, i.e. knowledge storage and retrieval.Design/methodology/approach – A case study design is used. Data are collected through the use of individual semi‐structured interviews, observations and document analysis.Findings – This study found that three factors were likely to influence the knowledge retrieval process from information technology repositories and that the process of storage was connected to three distinct events that happened before, during, and after the repository was introduced into the organization. Furthermore, it was also found that knowledge management processes, i.e. knowledge storage and retrieval, were connected to individual learning.Research limitations/implications – This study has limitations connected to empirical generalizability because it is a single case study research. Also, this study focuses only on two knowledge management processes...

Use of Social Media for e-Government in the Public Health Sector: A Systematic Review of Published Studies

Although the intersection between social media and health has received considerable research attention, little is known about how public sector health organizations are using social media for e-Government. This systematic literature review sought to capture, classify, appraise and synthesize relevant evidence from four international research databases and gray literature. From 2441 potentially relevant search results only 22 studies fully met the inclusion criteria. This modest evidence-base is mostly descriptive, unidisciplinary and lacks the theoretical depth seen in other branches of e-Government research. Most studies were published in the last five years in medical journals, focus on Twitter and come from high income countries. The reported e-Government objectives mainly fall into Bertot et al.s (2010) categories of transparency/accountability, democratic participation, and co-production, with least emphasis on the latter. A unique category of evaluation also emerged. The lack of robust evidence makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of these approaches in the public health sector and further research is warranted.

Human resource information systems in health care: a systematic evidence review

Objective: This systematic review aimed to: (1) determine the prevalence and scope of existing research on human resource information systems (HRIS) in health organizations; (2) analyze, classify, and synthesize evidence on the processes and impacts of HRIS development, implementation, and adoption; and (3) generate recommendations for HRIS research, practice, and policy, with reference to the needs of different stakeholders. Methods: A structured search strategy was used to interrogate 10 electronic databases indexing research from the health, social, management, technology, and interdisciplinary sciences, alongside gray literature sources and reference lists of qualifying studies. There were no restrictions on language or publication year. Two reviewers screened publications, extracted data, and coded findings according to the innovation stages covered in the studies. The Critical Appraisal Skills Program checklist was adopted to assess study quality. The process of study selection was charted using a Preferred Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) diagram. Results: Of the 6824 publications identified by the search strategy, 68, covering 42 studies, were included for final analysis. Research on HRIS in health was interdisciplinary, often atheoretical, conducted primarily in the hospital sector of high-income economies, and largely focused uncritically on use and realized benefits. Discussion and Conclusions: While studies of HRIS in health exist, the overall lack of evaluative research raises unanswered questions about their capacity to improve quality and efficiency and enable learning health systems, as well as how sociotechnical complexity influences implementation and effectiveness. We offer this analysis to decision makers and managers considering or currently implementing an HRIS, and make recommendations for further research. Trial Registration: International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO): CRD42015023581. http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42015023581#.VYu1BPlVjDU.

Human Resource Information Systems in Health Care: Protocol for a Systematic Review

Background Compared with the eHealth literature as a whole, there has been relatively little published research on the use and impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) designed to support business functions within health organizations. Human resource information systems (HRISs) have the potential to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness by facilitating workforce planning, financial and operational administration, staff training, and management analytics. However, the evidence base regarding HRIS in health care is widely distributed across disciplinary boundaries and previous reviews have been somewhat limited in scope. This rigorous systematic review will identify, appraise, and synthesize existing international research on the implementation and impacts of HRIS in health organizations, to provide insights and recommendations that may guide future purchasers, commissioners, implementers, evaluators, and users of such systems. Objective The objectives of this review are threefold: (1) to determine the prevalence and scope of existing research and evaluation pertaining to HRIS in health organizations; (2) to analyze, classify, and synthesize existing evidence on the processes and impacts of HRIS development, implementation, and adoption; and (3) to generate recommendations for HRIS research, practice, and policy, with reference to the needs of different stakeholders and communities of practice. Methods A high-level scoping review was first undertaken to inform a draft search strategy, which was refined through several cycles of piloting and iteration to optimize its sensitivity and specificity. This was used by the first author, with the help of a medical librarian, to search international electronic databases indexing medical, business, ICT, and multi-disciplinary research. Sources of gray literature and reference lists of included studies were also searched. There were no restrictions on language or publication year. Two reviewers are now screening and coding titles and abstracts for potentially eligible studies, for which full text articles will be retrieved. Reasons for exclusion will be noted for the remaining articles. A structured form will be used to summarize and classify the articles. Any disagreements between reviewers will be resolved through consensus or arbitration by a third reviewer. A PRISMA flow diagram will illustrate the study selection process and ensure transparency of the review. Finally, content experts will be consulted to ensure that important articles have not been missed. Results The initial searches have now been completed and the results are being analyzed. The review is expected to be completed and published by the end of 2015. Conclusions By synthesizing the existing evidence base, identifying areas in which knowledge is currently lacking, and generating recommendations for research and practice, this review will be a useful resource for decision makers and managers considering or implementing HRIS, as well as encouraging new research in this area. Trial Registration PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews: CRD42015023581; http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42015023581#.VYu1BPlVjDU (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6ckJCDdCL)

Social Media for e-Government in the Public Health Sector: Protocol for a Systematic Review

Background Public sector organizations worldwide are engaging with social media as part of a growing e-government agenda. These include government departments of health, public health agencies, and state-funded health care and research organizations. Although examples of social media in health have been described in the literature, little is known about their overall scope or how they are achieving the objectives of e-government. A systematic literature review is underway to capture and synthesize existing evidence on the adoption, use, and impacts of social media in the public health sector. A series of parallel scoping exercises has taken place to examine (1) relevant existing systematic reviews, to assess their focus, breadth, and fit with our review topic, (2) existing concepts related to e-government, public health, and the public health sector, to assess how semantic complexity might influence the review process, and (3) the results of pilot searches, to examine the fit of social media within the e-government and health literatures. The methods and observations of the scoping exercises are reported in this protocol, alongside the methods and interim results for the systematic review itself. Objective The systematic review has three main objectives: To capture the corpus of published studies on the uses of social media by public health organizations; to classify the objectives for which social media have been deployed in these contexts and the methods used; and to analyze and synthesize evidence of the uptake, use, and impacts of social media on various outcomes. Methods A set of scoping exercises were undertaken, to inform the search strategy and analytic framework. Searches have been carried out in MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and the Scopus international electronic databases, and appropriate gray literature sources. Articles published between January 1, 2004, and July 12, 2015, were included. There was no restriction by language. One reviewer (AT) has independently screened citations generated by the search terms and is extracting data from the selected articles. A second author (CP) is cross-checking the outputs to ensure the fit of selected articles with the inclusion criteria and appropriate data extraction. A PRISMA flow diagram will be created, to track the study selection process and ensure transparency and replicability of the review. Results Scoping work revealed that the literature on social media for e-government in the public health sector is complicated by heterogeneous terminologies and concepts, although studies at the intersection of these three topics exist. Not all types of e-government are evident in the health care literature. Interim results suggest that most relevant articles focus on usage alone. Conclusions Public health organizations may be taking it for granted that social media deliver benefits, rather than attempting to evaluate their adoption or impacts. Published taxonomies of e-government hold promise for organizing and interpreting the review results. The systematic review is underway and completion is expected in the beginning of 2016. Trial Registration PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews: CRD42015024731; http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42015024731 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6dV1Cin91).

Meeting Organizational Performance with Shared Knowledge Management Processes

The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to knowledge management theory and to provide a practical approach for managing information technology repositories. This study investigates how knowledge is stored and retrieved in a professional setting and contributes to define a comprehensive framework on the use of knowledge, technology, and managerial systems to improve organizational performance. Qualitative research methods are used to collect data from an American company through individual semi-structured interviews, on-site observations, and document analysis. The qualitative software package Atlas.ti® is used to analyze data. Findings highlight the importance of individual knowledge, managerial capabilities, and shared organizational technologies in the management of organizational processes and reveal factors influencing the processes of knowledge storage and retrieval. This study points out the role of shared organizational memory systems and suggests strategies to improve the effectiveness of information technology repositories. Implications for theory and practice, limitations connected to empirical generalization, and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

What Kind of Benefits Different Stakeholders Can Expect and Obtain from HRIS Implementations: An Italian Case Study

Introducing IT-enabled transformational change in the public sector can be complex and challenging. Documentary analysis and in-depth interviews were used to study the introduction of a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) in one Italian regional healthcare organisation (RHO). Drawing on existing HRIS benefit models, we examined the types of benefit envisaged by different stakeholders and how these were realised in practice, along with unintended outcomes. Analysis revealed that the RHO had derived value from the implementation project, whilst demonstrating variations in expected and realised benefits between different categories of employee and co-dependencies between different types of benefit. We propose an extended and empirically-informed model of expected and realized benefits from HRIS in health organizations, which takes account of these interdependencies and differences.

Qualitative Performance and Diversity Management in University Teaching Evaluation

The problem with university instruction evaluation is one of the biggest topics of the evaluation methods. In this paper we will analyze the Teaching Quality Perception (TQP) of the students of a Business Administration (BA), trying to identify a series of indicators concerning the level of the distributed performances, in terms of quality of the instructions, support and so forth. To such scope we will use the evidence variated by the model ServPerf (Cronin-Taylor, 1992) trying to establish the qualitative level of the performances of the CoB considering the relative parameter to the quality of the didactics. On the base of the research of Lodan and Rosener (1991), the scope of this research is to confront the level of the qualitative performances of the afferent Course of Bachelor with three topics of diversity: gender and age as primaries dimension and type of received formation as secondary dimension. In order to proceed to such analysis we will use the statistical instrument of the linear correlation to establish which are the variables that effectively affect the perception of the level of quality of the university service from part of the students.

Life Quality and Citizen Satisfaction

In this paper we report the methodology developed by our group to study the life quality in the city of Naples. The general concept of “quality of life�? has been a central topic of interest in relevant social debate in the recent years. The goal of this study is to analyze aspects regarding the citizens life, and involves economic, social and cultural aspects of individual life. For the all the 21 Districts of the city of Naples, we analyzed services, perceptions and needs of the citizens. The model that we developed has been considered an original one since takes in account both, the objective and the subjective aspects. The objective aspects are related to the quality of identified factors defining the level of the city welfare; the subjective aspects involves the citizens needs. The model has been considering two different points of view: the supply, addressing the concept of welfare from an objective viewpoint; the demand, addressing the concept of life quality from a subjective viewpoint. In this paper we present the methodological approach and the quantitative results of our research.

The Role of the Climate for the Improvement of Team Creativity Processes

The present work intends to contribute to the debate about the identification of the key dimensions (Ekvall, 1996; Amason, 1996; Justesen, 2001; De Dreu et al., 2003) of an effective creative process of the teams (Hackman, 1987). The study has been developed trough a qualitative analysis formed of three research tools by means of the triangulation method: interviews, direct observation of the work teams and focus groups. The results of the investigation lead to give evidence of the importance of climate and experience, between all the other variables, to enable team creativity processes.