Suranjan Chakraborty

Examining the success factors for mobile work in healthcare: A deductive study

Mobile work is emerging as an area of major importance in healthcare. However, past literature on this topic remains largely anecdotal, fragmented, and atheoretical. In this paper, we address this gap and adapt the DeLone and McLean model of IS success to the context of mobile work in healthcare, and articulate specific propositions. We then deductively evaluate each proposition based on studies reporting mobile device use in the healthcare context. Through this rigorous evaluation process, we are able to deliver a revised theoretical model that presents a consolidated view of the literature in the area of mobile work in healthcare.

Assessing the relative contribution of the facets of agility to distributed systems development success: an Analytic Hierarchy Process approach

Recent studies have sought to identify different types/facets of agility that can potentially contribute to distributed Information Systems Development (ISD) project success. However, prior research has not attempted to assess the relative importance of the various types of agility with respect to different ISD success measures. We believe that such an assessment is critical, since this information can enable organizations to direct scarce organizational resources to the types of agility that are most relevant. To this end, we use the Analytic Hierarchy Process to unearth, from the perspectives of two stakeholder groups of distributed software development projects, managers, and technical staff members, as to which agility facets facilitate (and to what degree) on-time completion of projects and effective collaboration in distributed ISD teams. Furthermore, noting that there is a need for an overall set of prioritized agility facets (by integrating managerial and technically oriented perspectives), we present three ways to aggregate the preferences of the two groups.

Path to “Stardom” in Globally Distributed Hybrid Teams: An Examination of a Knowledge-Centered Perspective using Social Network Analysis

Although distributed teams have been researched extensively in information systems and decision science disciplines, a review of the literature suggests that the dominant focus has been on understanding the factors affecting performance at the team level. There has however been an increasing recognition that specific individuals within such teams are often critical to the teams performance. Consequently, existing knowledge about such teams may be enhanced by examining the factors that affect the performance of individual team members. This study attempts to address this need by identifying individuals who emerge as “stars” in globally distributed teams involved in knowledge work such as information systems development (ISD). Specifically, the study takes a knowledge-centered view in explaining which factors lead to “stardom” in such teams. Further, it adopts a social network approach consistent with the core principles of structural/relational analysis in developing and empirically validating the research model. Data from U.S.–Scandinavia self-managed “hybrid” teams engaged in systems development were used to deductively test the proposed model. The overall study has several implications for group decision making: (i) the study focuses on stars within distributed teams, who play an important role in shaping group decision making, and emerge as a result of a negotiated/consensual decision making within egalitarian teams; (ii) an examination of emergent stars from the team members’ point of view reflects the collective acceptance and support dimension decision-making contexts identified in prior literature; (iii) finally, the study suggests that the social network analysis technique using relational data can be a tool for a democratic decision-making technique within groups.

Applying the Grounded Theory Method to Derive Enterprise System Requirements

Enterprise architectures (EA) embody the business objectives, processes and information technology infrastructure reflecting the desired incorporation and standardization requirements of a company’s operating model. It is vital that during the initial design stages the software system’s architecture aligns with the EA. While frameworks exist to check the alignment of enterprise and system architectures, there is an assumption of well-defined requirements derived from the EA’s business objectives. This transition is non-trivial as the EA can be a significant document representing the viewpoints of the stakeholders. This paper proposes and illustrates, using the Grounded Theory Methodology, a systematic, qualitative procedure, to extract the functional and non-functional enterprise requirements from the EA and/or system description. The contribution of this work is to further systematize the alignment and traceability of EA and system architectures and provide the initial requirements and system models necessary for supporting the of enterprise systems.

Strategic Relevance of Organizational Virtues Enabled by Information Technology in Organizational Innovation

Abstract The central theme of this paper is that information technology (IT) can serve to create ethical organizations endowed with virtuous characteristics, and that such ethical organizations can innovate better in today’s dynamic market environment. Drawing on the notion of virtue ethics propounded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, we theorize that core organizational IT affordances influence the development of organizational virtues, which in turn influence organizational improvisational capabilities and innovation. We propose the “IT-virtues-innovation” (IVI) model and test it using a cross-organizational survey of 250 employees from various organizations in the United States. Our findings largely support our proposal that IT affordances positively influence organizational virtues, which then influence organizational improvisational capabilities, thus improving organizational innovation. This paper contributes to the understanding of organizational innovation by articulating the strategic usefulness of IT-enabled organizational ethics, and it explains how IT-enabled ethical competence (virtues) influences strategic competence (improvisational capabilities and innovation).

Designing accessible visualizations: the case of designing a weather map for blind users

Major strides have been made to improve the accessibility of text-based documents for blind users, however, visualizations still remain largely inaccessible. The AISP framework represents an attempt to streamline the design process by aligning the information seeking behaviors of a blind user with those of a sighted user utilizing auditory feedback. With the recent popularity of touch-based devices, and the overwhelming success of the talking tactile tablet, we therefore suggest that the AISP framework be extended to include the sense of touch. This research-in-progress paper proposes such an extended design framework, MISD. In addition, the article also presents the preliminary work done in designing an accessible weather map based on our theory-driven design. A discussion and an outline of future work conclude the manuscript.

On Applying the Theory of Structuration in Enterprise Architecture Design

The processes used to develop Enterprise Architecture (EA) define a framework that details the infrastructure, specifications and technical requirements needed by an organization. Current EA approaches do not consider the behavioral patterns exhibited by stakeholders and the effects of change introduced by an EA. The failure to recognize and address the impact of stakeholder behavior as an input to, and result of, an EA manifests itself in the EA being either partially implemented or completely abandoned. This paper examines existing EA frameworks lack of recognition of stakeholder behavior as a first-class design consideration and proposes an approach incorporating ideas from the theory of structuration to address stakeholder behavior as a significant input to EA design. The contribution of this paper is the detailing of stakeholder behavior as an important ingredient in an EA and the utilization of aspects of organizational and behavioral theory as a lens to guide stakeholder communication and motivation as a part of the EA development process.

Development and Evaluation of Sonified Weather Maps for Blind Users

In recent years there have been significant advances in developing websites that are accessible for individuals with disabilities. In particular, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/wai) provide clear standards for developing accessible web based content, and have been the foundation for legal guidelines developed in many countries (Meiselwitz et al., 2010). However, a challenging aspect of accessible web design is developing equivalents of data visualisations for blind users, since data visualisations are often used to allow quicker comprehension of large and complex data sets (Fritz and Barner, 1999). In this research we investigate the potential use of sonification for presenting weather data to blindusers. At this juncture we would like to emphasise that that the term “blind users” has different meanings depending on context and country. For instance, in the US, “blind users” refers to anyone with any type of visual loss, whereas in the UK, “visually impaired” is often used to describe people with low vision, and “blind” is used to describe someone with no useful residual vision.

Offshore Vendors' Software Development Team Configurations: An Exploratory Study

This research uses configuration theory and data collected from a major IT vendor organization to examine primary configurations of distributed teams in a global off-shoring context. The study indicates that off-shoring vendor organizations typically deploy three different types of configurations, which the authors term as thin-at-client, thick-at-client, and hybrid. These configurations differ in terms of the size of the sub-teams in the different distributed locations and the nature of the ISD-related tasks performed by the distributed team members. In addition, the different configurations were compared on their inherent process-related and resource-related flexibilities. The thick-at-client configuration emerged as the one that offers superior flexibility in all dimensions.However, additional analysis also revealed contingencies apart from flexibility that may influence the appropriateness of the distributed ISD team configuration, including the volatility of the client organizations environment and the extent to which the ISD tasks can be effortlessly moved to the vendors home location.

Getting to the Shalls: Facilitating Sensemaking in Requirements Engineering

Sensemaking in Requirements Engineering (RE) relies on knowledge transfer, communication, and negotiation of project stakeholders. It is a critical and challenging aspect of Information Systems (IS) development. One of the most fundamental aspects of RE is the specification of traceable, unambiguous, and operationalizable functional and nonfunctional requirements. This remains a nontrivial task in the face of the complexity inherent in RE due to the lack of well-documented, systematic procedures that facilitate a structured analysis of the qualitative data from stakeholder interviews, observations, and documents that are typically the input to this activity. This research develops a systematic and traceable procedure, for non-functional requirements the Grounded and Linguistic-Based Requirements Analysis Procedure (GLAP), which can fill this gap by incorporating perspectives from Grounded Theory Method, linguistic analysis of language quality, Volere typology, and the Nonfunctional Requirements Framework without significantly deviating from existing practice. The application of GLAP is described along with empirical illustrations using RE data from a redesign initiative of a library website of a public university in the United States. An outlook is given on further work and necessary evaluation steps.