JITCAR 2011, Vol. 13 No. 1
From the Editor’s Desk
Suprateek Sarker, Washington State University, USA
This is the first issue of the journal being published since I assumed the role of its Editor-in-Chief (in January 2011). The first paper by Fernandez and Lehman is a methodology-focused editorial that I believe will be of interest to many of our readers. The second paper by Peak, Prybutok, Guynes and Xu examines the Information Technology (IT) Alignment Planning process—a strategic IT planning process created to complement the corporate planning process used by a major utility company in the Midwest—so that it could serve as a template for other organizations. The third contribution is a teaching case about the adoption of electronic medical records.
ARTICLES:
Case Studies and Grounded Theory Method in Information Systems Research: Issues and Use
Walter D. Fernández, The Australian National University, Australia
Hans Lehmann, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
ABSTRACT
Information systems (IS) are a hybrid of information technology, procedures and people in organizations. The Grounded Theory Method (GTM) was at its inception explicitly developed for research about the interactions of individual human actors in predominantly social settings. Therefore, applying the method to IS research–where organizational cases are often a dominant unit of analysis–requires both an extension of the method and a wider interpretation of its guidelines. This research note discusses these issues and suggests an extended process of analysis of case-based data in line with traditional GTM canons.
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Aligning Information Technology with Business Strategy: An Action Research Approach
Daniel A. Peak, Carl S. Guynes, Victor R. Prybutok, and Chenyan Xu University of North Texas, USA
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this work is to examine the Information Technology (IT) Alignment Planning process—a strategic IT planning process created to complement the corporate planning process used by a major utility company in the Midwest—so that it could serve as a template for other organizations. Corporate planning activities produced the divisional strategies, critical success factors, and goals that then were used to by the IT Alignment Planning process to align IT within the company.
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Information Technology Implementation and Adoption in Relation to Electronic Medical Records
Elaine R. Winston, Hofstra University, USA
B. Dawn Medlin, Appalachian State University, USA
ABSTRACT
The use of information technology in health care fields is often touted as a way to lower the spiraling costs of health care while making it more accessible to both patient and physician. Faced with increasing government regulations and eroding profit margins, Blocker Medical Associates1 has made a bold decision to implement an electronic medical record and reengineer its office work processes. This case follows Blocker Medical Associates’ journey through the first stage of a three-stage electronic medical record implementation model. Additionally, this case focuses on the physicians’ interactions and resistance to the adoption of electronic medical records.
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Expert Opinion
An Interview with Alistair Croll, Principal Analyst, Bitcurrent, Montreal, Canada
Conducted and Documented by: Mahesh S. Raisinghani, Texas Woman's University, USA
Alistair Croll founded Bitcurrent in 2006. Since that time, he’s been writing on emerging technologies, authoring books on web performance and IT operations, and running some of the world’s biggest conferences on emerging technology. In addition to Bitcurrent, Alistair is a founding partner at startup accelerator Year One Labs, an advisor to several venture capital organizations, an executive at CloudOps, and the founder of the Bitnorth conference and the Human 2.0 blog on human-machine convergence.
Book Review
Challenges of the Digital Age: an MIS Analysis Framework – The Case Study of a Retail Store Chain
by Atieno Ndede-Amadi
Published in 2009 by KeKoBI Publishing Kenya Limited,
ISBN: 978-9966-05-215-5, 120 pages
Reviewed by Mahesh S. Raisinghani, Texas Woman's University, USA
JITCAR 2011, Vol.13 No. 2
From the Editor’s Desk
Suprateek Sarker, Washington State University, USA
The first paper, a research case study, is by Chou, Weng and Wu, and it illustrates how a business intelligence (BI) system enables the transformations of organizational management control systems (MCS). The second paper is by Burdon and Feeny. Creating competitive advantage from ICT is commonly believed to require access to specialist skills of external IT&T providers, (Hunter and Cooksey, 2004). The third paper by Schlichter and Andersen presents findings on dynamic aspects of trust and springs from a six-year longitudinal qualitative case study of the Faroese Ministry of Health and Social Affairs implementation of integrated healthcare information systems.
ARTICLES:
IT-ENABLED MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS TRANSFORMATIONS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM SAVECOM
Tzu-Chuan Chou, Pu-Dong Weng, Tsung-Cheng Wu, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C.
tcchou@mail.ntust.edu.tw | donaldweng@savecom.net.tw | tcwu@cs.ntust.edu.tw
ABSTRACT
Information technology (IT)-enabled organizational transformations are emphasized in a great deal of research. However, IT-enabled management control systems (MCS) transformations to facility management for steering an organization toward its strategic objectives have become relevant and important, yet underexplored. To address this gap, the present study illustrates how a business intelligence (BI) system enables the transformations of organizational MCS. Through an in-depth case study of a Taiwanese telecommunications company, the IT features, and their direct effects and induced effects to MCS are analyzed in terms of an organization’s belief systems, boundary systems, diagnostic control systems, and interactive control systems. The implications for the organizational MCS design of these effects are discussed.
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MOBILIZING FOR VALUE ADDED PARTNERSHIPS
Steve Burdon, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, Stephen.Burdon@uts.edu.au
David Feeny, University of Oxford, UK, David.Feeny@sbs.ox.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
According to Krishnamurthy et al (2007) the building of competitive advantage from alliances via innovation with technical partners is the most challenging of the objectives sought in partnerships. Academic research in the last decade has examined the prerequisites and success factors and general agreement has been reached on the critical issues. They include, for example, the concept of relationship capital - mutual trust, mutual commitment and information exchange (Sarkar et al, 2001). However, it is not clear that this knowledge has led to improvements in the historically poor success ratio. This case explores the successful implementation of an innovation partnership, endorsing the recent work by Sturgess & Cumming (2011) on the importance of a focus on implementation.
Previous academic research on such partnerships has tended to focus on manufacturing; in particular the automotive engineering and pharmaceutical sectors. Relationships were typically asymmetric with the supplier being much smaller in size and power relative to the manufacturer. The authors wanted to explore a different power and size relationship emerging from the growing needs of a number of service industries, where technology is becoming a strategic imperative for gaining competitive advantage. Organisations in the aviation, retail banking and retail communications sectors are seeking IT and telecommunication skills that will help them build competitive advantage from better services, systems and products. The most knowledgeable organisations with this technical knowledge tend to be large ones. Our case examines how Westpac, a large retail bank in Australia, went about the task of reviewing their existing commercial relationships and selected the most promising one for the objective of building a trusted value adding partnership. In the process, they identified the critical pre-requisites and developed a five-stage key success model for implementation. It is hoped that the study will encourage other researchers to look more closely at the implementation challenge.
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RECOVERING FROM TRUST BREAKDOWNS IN LARGE SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATIONS
Bjarne Rerup Schlichter, Povl Erik Rostgaard Andersen, Department of Business Administration, Business and Social Sciences,
Aarhus University, Denmark, brs@asb.dk | ros@asb.dk
ABSTRACT
On the basis of experiences from the Faroese large-scale implementation of integrated healthcare information systems and insights into dynamic aspects of trust, we offer the following lessons for the successful management and recovery of trust (breakdowns) in large system implementations: restore relations by turning towards face-to-face events and procedures, assure a well-functioning and available support organization, demonstrate trust in actors to enhance their own self-confidence, and celebrate successes, even the smallest ones or those injected by yourself. The propositions are based on a six-year longitudinal qualitative case study and analyzed using critical incidents and content analysis by means of a framework based on Giddens Theories on Modernity and Abstract Systems. The propositions were discussed in a seminar with the project participants. Finally the findings are challenged and sharpened and suggestions for further research are given.
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There is NO 'EXPERT OPINION' for JITCAR 2011 13.2 issue!
Book Review
The Outsourcing Enterprise: From Cost Management to Collaborative Innovation
By Leslie P. Willcocks, Sara Cullen, and Andrew Craig, Published in 2011 by Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 978-0-230-23191-7; 287 pages
Reviewed by Richard G. Platt, University of West Florida, rplatt@uwf.edu
JITCAR 2011, Vol.13 No. 3
*****COMING SOON*****
