Xitong Guo

Combining social network and semantic concept analysis for personalized academic researcher recommendation

The rapid proliferation of information technologies especially Web 2.0 techniques has changed the fundamental ways how things can be done in many areas, including how researchers could communicate and collaborate with each other. The presence of the sheer volume of researchers and research information on the Web has led to the problem of information overload. There is a pressing need to develop researcher recommendation agents such that users can be provided with personalized recommendations of the researchers they can potentially collaborate with for mutual research benefits. In academic contexts, recommending suitable research partners to researchers can facilitate knowledge discovery and exchange, and ultimately improve the research productivity of researchers. Existing expertise recommendation research usually investigates the expert recommending problem from two independent dimensions, namely, their social relations and expertise information. The main contribution of this paper is that we propose a network based researcher recommendation approach which combines social network analysis and semantic concept analysis in a unified framework to improve the effectiveness of personalized researcher recommendation. The results of our experiment show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the other baseline methods. Moreover, how our proposed framework can be applied to the real-world academic contexts is explained based on a case study.

Exploring the influence of social media on employee work performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of social media on employees’ work performance, as well as the underlying mechanism for how they create value at work. Design/methodology/approach – Based on media synchronicity and social capital theories, the authors propose that social media can foster employees’ social capital and subsequently facilitate knowledge transfer. Both social capital and knowledge transfer help promote work performance. Specifically, the authors adopt shared vision, network ties and trust to represent, respectively, the cognitive, structural and relational dimensions of social capital. The research model is tested using data collected from 379 Chinese working professionals. Findings – The empirical results reveal that social media can promote the formation of employees’ social capital indicated by network ties, shared vision and trust, which, in turn, can facilitate knowledge transfer. Shared vision and knowledge transfer positively influence work performanc...

Chaos Theory as a Lens for Interpreting Blogging

Abstract: Blogging is becoming increasingly popular as a global phenomenon. Individual blog traffic and blogosphere structure are of interest to academia and practice. Although it is difficult to get a snapshot of the blogosphere with enough blogs over a long enough period to capture the real situation, chaos theory finds underlying order in this apparent random and complex phenomenon. This study provides an overall view of blogging from micro (individual blog traffic dynamics) and macro (blogosphere structure) levels through a chaos theory lens. Key concepts of chaos theory are used to construct an interpretive framework to illustrate blog system behavior dynamics. Blog systems tend to be nonlinear, dynamic, and deterministic, as well as sensitive to initial conditions. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of applying chaos theory thinking to areas such as knowledge management and the recent global financial crisis. Implications for practice and research opportunities are presented.

The role of social media in supporting knowledge integration: A social capital analysis

Internet of things (IoT) is a current trend that reveals the next generation Internet-based information architecture, the convergence of social networks and IoT solutions is helpful to optimize relationships among objects. In order for IoT to take off in the IT sector, providers and other stakeholders must integrate knowledge successfully. In this study, we investigate the role of social media in supporting knowledge integration from a social capital perspective. Specifically, we propose that social media have the potential to facilitate the formation of employees’ social capital indicated by social networking, trust and shared language. These mediating variables will in turn positively affect knowledge integration. This research frame is validated with survey data collected from 262 Chinese working professionals. The results provide general empirical support for our hypotheses. In analogy with social media for human beings, the future direction of socialization among objects can be inspired by this study.

A conceptual model of technology features and technostress in telemedicine communication

Purpose – This paper aims to provide systemic understanding with regard to the adoption of computer mediated communication (CMC) technology and its impact on technostress levels.Design/methodology/approach – Based on the theoretical lens rooted in the psychology literature and emerging problems observed through engagement with organizations in their field research, the authors propose a conceptual model that articulates technology characteristics in telemedicine communication. The model defines both the antecedents and outcomes of technostress, emphasizing investigation of the underlying mechanisms of the overall process in regard to fit between users and adopted technologies.Findings – In order to understand the impact of technostress on telemedicine users, it is necessary to investigate the “black box” of how technology influences stressors. According to the theoretical lens of person‐environment (P‐E) theory, stress occurs when there is a misfit between individuals’ characteristics and environmental se...

A Dataflow Perspective for Business Process Integration

Business process integration has become prevalent as business increasingly crosses organizational boundaries. To address the issue of protecting organizations’ competitive knowledge and private information while also enabling business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, past research has focused mainly on customized public and private process design, as well as structural correctness of the integrated workflow. However, a dataflow perspective is important for business process integration. This article presents a data-flow perspective using workflow management and mathematical techniques to address data exchange problems in independent multistakeholder business process integration in dynamic circumstances. The research is conducted following a design science paradigm. We build artifacts that include interorganizational workflow concepts, a workflow model, and a public dataset calculation method. The use of the proposed artifacts is illustrated by applying them to a real-world case in the Shenzhen (Chaiwan) port. The utility of the artifacts is evaluated through interviews with practitioners in industry. We conclude that this research complements the control-flow perspective in the interorganizational workflow management area and also contributes to B2B information-sharing literature; further, the dataflow formalism can help practitioners to formally provide the right data at the right time in dynamic circumstances.

How Doctors Gain Social and Economic Returns in Online Health-Care Communities: A Professional Capital Perspective

Abstract An online health-care community (OHC) is a novel channel through which doctors share medical or health-care knowledge with patients. While the sustainable development of an OHC relies on doctors’ participation, we have limited information on how doctors can gain benefits from OHCs. In attempting to close this knowledge gap, we examine the determinants of social and economic returns of doctors at OHCs by extending the social exchange theory into the professional domain. The notion of professional capital, as a set of renewable resources for social professionals developed by good education within a territory of social practice, is introduced to understand the unique resources available to doctors for social exchange. Specifically, we examine the effects of status capital and decisional capital (two dimensions of professional capital) on doctors’ social and economic returns. Moreover, we explore how such effects differ across different doctor groups. The results show that, in addition to the widespread pursuit of celebrity doctors (who can be recognized by their high status capital) offline, the doctor’s decisional capital is also an important professional component in maintaining exchange returns at OHCs. This study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between professional capital and the exchange returns, and extends prior research on OHCs through a professional capital perspective with implications for theory and practice.

The Impact of Individual and Organizational Reputation on Physicians’ Appointments Online

ABSTRACT Insufficient research exists on the impact of reputation in online health-care market communities, especially from the multilevel and cross-level perspectives. Based on prior research on individual and organizational reputation, we hypothesize multilevel and cross-level reputation determinants of physicians’ performance in online health-care market communities. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we analyzed the data of 47,182 physicians from 660 hospitals in a Chinese online health-care market community to test our hypotheses. Our results suggest that the number of physicians’ appointments is positively associated with their individual offline and online reputations, as well as the offline and online reputation of the hospital in which the physicians work. We also find that organizational reputation moderates the relationship between an individual’s reputation and a physician’s performance, in such a way that the hospital’s offline reputation increases the importance of physicians’ online reputation in promoting the number of physicians’ appointments. However, the hospital’s online reputation enhances the relationship between physicians’ offline reputation and the number of appointments. Our study contributes to existing theories of reputation and the signaling theory, and also provides physicians with guidelines that support them in effectively improving their performance.

Understanding Dynamic Collaboration in Teleconsultation

Information and communication technology has been widely deployed in the provision of healthcare for decades. Teleconsultation, one of the new means of providing healthcare solutions, has been prevalently implemented in numerous countries. In principle, it is expected with great potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare service through wide accessibility and cost control. However, many teleconsultation systems have been installed but abandoned rapidly or used at a disappointing low level. This paper explores the antecedents of low usage in post-adoption of teleconsultation service in clinical practice. We identify specific theoretical attributes targeted on the research problem and extend the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework into a multi-dimensional analytical framework. We design a comparative case study and conduct deductive analysis to test our propositions using data from multiple sources. The proposed analytical framework and empirical findings not only provide theoretical contribution by articulating the TOE framework to reflect the specific and distinguished characteristics in teleconsultation services, but also provide implications for practitioners to develop better strategies for teleconsultation collaboration.

Exploring the inhibitors of online health service use intention: A status quo bias perspective

Abstract Why do online health services (OHSs) have a relatively low visit-use rate? Drawing on the status quo bias (SQB) theory and the rational choice theory, we developed an integrated research model to explore this phenomenon. To test the model, an online-survey was conducted in China with 339 valid responses for analysis. There are three insightful theoretical implications of the results: (1) Inhibitors in traditional healthcare hinder OHS use intention; (2) The rational choice theory can be used to measure the effects of the SQB on behavioral intentions, indicating that the SQB is capable of influencing behavioral intention from a rational decision process; and (3) The rational choice theory can be used in less rational situations.