Tracy Ann Sykes

Understanding e-Government portal use in rural India: role of demographic and personality characteristics

Electronic government (e‐Government) is one of the most important ways to bridge the digital divide in developing countries. We develop a model of e‐Government portal use. We use various individual characteristics, namely demographics and personality, as predictors of e‐Government portal use. Specifically, our predictors were (1) gender, age, income and education; (2) the Big Five personality characteristics, i.e. extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience; and (3) personal innovativeness with information technology. We conducted a field study in a village in India. We collected data from over 300 heads of household. We found support for our model, with most variables being significant and explaining 40% of the variance in e‐Government portal use.

'Just What the Doctor Ordered': A Revised UTAUT for EMR System Adoption and Use by Doctors

Electronic medical record (EMR) systems can deliver many benefits to healthcare organizations and the patients they serve. However, one of the biggest stumbling blocks in garnering these benefits is the limited adoption and use by doctors. We employ the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) as the theoretical foundation and adapt the theory to the context of EMR system adoption and use by doctors. Specifically, we suggest that age will be the only significant moderator, and gender, voluntariness and experience will not play significant moderating roles. We tested our model in a longitudinal study over a 7-month period in a hospital implementing a new EMR system. We collected 3 waves of survey data from 141 doctors and used system logs to measure use. While the original UTAUT only predicted about 20% of the variance in intention, the modified UTAUT predicted 44%. Both models were comparable in their prediction of use. In addition to contributing to healthcare IT and UTAUT research, we hope this work will serve as a foundation for future work that integrates UTAUT with other theoretical perspectives.

Enterprise system implementation and employee: understanding the role of advice networks

The implementation of enterprise systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, alters business processes and associated workflows, and introduces new software applications that employees must use. Employees frequently find such technology-enabled organizational change to be a major challenge. Although many challenges related to such changes have been discussed in prior work, little research has focused on post-implementation job outcomes of employees affected by such change. We draw from social network theory-- specifically, advice networks--to understand a key post-implementation job outcome (i.e., job performance). We conducted a study among 87 employees, with data gathered before and after the implementation of an ERP system module in a business unit of a large organization. We found support for our hypotheses that workflow advice and software advice are associated with job performance. Further, as predicted, we found that the interactions of workflow and software get-advice, workflow and software give-advice, and software get- and give-advice were associated with job performance. This nuanced treatment of advice networks advances our understanding of post-implementation success of enterprise systems.

Digital Divide Initiative Success in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal Field Study in a Village in India

Digital divide initiatives in developing countries are an important avenue for the socioeconomic advancement of those countries. Yet little research has focused on understanding the success of such initiatives. We develop a model of technology use and economic outcomes of digital divide initiatives in developing countries. We use social networks as the guiding theoretical lens because it is well suited to this context, given the low literacy, high poverty, high collectivism, and an oral tradition of information dissemination in developing countries. We test our model with longitudinal data gathered from 210 families in a rural village in India in the context of a digital divide initiative. As theorized, we found that the social network constructs contributed significantly to the explanation of technology use ( R 2 = 0.39). Also as we predicted, technology use partially mediated the effect of social network constructs on economic outcomes ( R 2 = 0.47). We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Support structures and their impacts on employee outcomes: a longitudinal field study of an enterprise system implementation

Despite the impressive progress in understanding the benefits and challenges related to enterprise system (ES) implementations--such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems--little is known about how the support structures traditionally used by organizations to help employees cope with a new ES affect employee outcomes related to the system and their jobs. Likewise, little is known about how existing peer advice ties in the business unit influence these outcomes after an ES implementation. Understanding employee outcomes is critical because of their ramifications for long-term ES success. This paper examines the impacts of four traditional support structures (namely, training, online support, help desk support, and change management support), and peer advice ties on four key employee outcomes (namely, system satisfaction, job stress, job satisfaction, and job performance). This paper also seeks to show that it is peer advice ties that best fill the complex informational needs of employees after an ES implementation by providing the right information at the right time and in the right context. The proposed model was tested in a field study conducted in one business unit of a large telecommunications company and gathered data from 120 supplier liaisons over the course of a year. Both traditional support structures and peer advice ties were found to influence the various outcomes, even after controlling for pre-implementation levels of the dependent variables. In all cases, peer advice ties was the strongest predictor, thus underscoring the importance of this critical internal resource.

Explaining Post-Implementation Employee System Use and Job Performance:: Impacts of the Content and Source of Social Network Ties

This paper draws from communication research and negative asymmetry theory to examine how employee social network ties at work affect deep structure use and job performance in the context of an enterprise system (ES) implementation. Specifically, we examine how the content (i.e., advice and impeding) and source (i.e., friends and acquaintances) of social network ties interact with one another to influence both deep structure use of the new ES and employee job performance. A longitudinal field study was conducted, with data collected from 145 employees and their supervisors in a business unit of a large multinational telecommunications firm. Results show that both source and content of social network ties influenced deep structure use of the new ES as well as employee job performance. This work contributes to the ES implementation literature by examining the influence of both positive and negative social ties. This work also identifies an important boundary condition of negative asymmetry theory by showing that not all negative stimuli influences behavior equally.

Extending the Concept of Control Beliefs: Integrating the Role of Advice Networks

Although control beliefs (CBs) can represent many different types of controls, information systems researchers have focused primarily on CBs related to technical compatibility, resource availability, and computer self-efficacy. More recent research has recognized that co-worker advice, which represents situated and improvised learning, can also be an important factor that can enable or impede system use. In addition, because advice from co-workers represents the social context by which the impacts of other traditional CBs are embedded, they may have the potential to alter the relationships between traditional CBs and system use. Against this backdrop, we examined the direct effects of CBs about advice from co-workers on system use as well as its ability to moderate the effects of other types of CBs on system use. To accomplish this, we conducted a three-month study of 112 employees in one business unit of an organization. Results supported our hypotheses that CBs about advice from co-workers directly infl...