Performance Impacts of Information Technology: Is Actual Usage the Missing Link?

In the last decade, many studies focused on the relationship between investment in information technology (IT) and its effect on organizational performance continues to interest academics and practitioners. Devaraj and Kohli (2003) assess the impact of the use of IT on organizational performance. The context of this study is the use of healthcare system to hospitals. The following figure shows the research model within the context of a hospital network of this study (Figure 1. p. 277):

Devaraj and Kohli (2003) collected the panel data across 8 hospitals of a health system network over 36 monthly time periods. The implemented technology is decision support systems (DSS) that help hospitals to identify clinical and financial, and quality improving opportunities. The usage of technology was captured from “a log created by a utility program to track user resource consumption (p. 278).”

Devaraj and Kohli (2003) use time-series analyses with fixed effects to estimate the proposed models. To check reverse causality, the authors performed the Granger Causality Test. The authors further conducted omitted variable test to address the omitted variable issue.

The following table summarizes the results of the study:

The results of this study provide general support for the proposition that the greater the actual usage of technology, the better the financial and quality performance of hospitals. Implications in this study include: (1). There is evidence that investments in technologies have positive payoffs when actual usage of the technology is considered. (2). This study presents evidence for the monetary impact and temporal impact due to the use of technology. (3). The IT payoff literature has documented mixed findings on the impact of IT investment on performance.

The creation of social value: can an online health community reduce rural-urban health disparities?

Goh, Gao and Agarwal (2016) investigated the creation of social value in online health communities. The authors proposed that online health communities provide a forum that transcends geographic constraints, representing a supportive social networking resource to mitigate health disparities.

Adapting the framework of health capability (Ruger 2010), the authors theorized how disadvantages caused by location lead to health capability’s gaps, and create health disparity outcomes. They argued that online health communities attenuates such a process by exchanging social support from urban to rural members.

Using a unique data set from a rare disease community, they conducted quantitative analysis by exponential random graph models to discover patterns of social support exchanged between users and the variations in these patterns based on users’ location. They found that, urban users are net suppliers of social support while rural participants are net recipients. Their finding advances extant understanding of value creation in online collectives, and yields implications for policy.

Managing Citizens’ Uncertainty in E-Government Services: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of Transparency and Trust

Venkatesh et al (2016) proposes an integrated technology adoption model in the context of citizens’ adoption and use of e-government services. This paper is driven by the underutilization of e-government services, which prevent the e-government to achieve its full potential.  This paper introduces the concept of uncertainty reduction and investigate the effects of citizen’s uncertainty on the use of e-government services.

There are three parts of the research mode of this paper. First, two main factors—information quality (accuracy and completeness) and channel characteristics (convenience and personalization), drive the intention uses of e-government services. Then the model proposes two means of uncertainty reduction—transparency and trust, can partially mediate and moderate the effects of information quality and channel on intention to use. At last, the model examines the effects of intention on the actual use and satisfaction.

Empirically, the paper collects 4430 data from citizen’s attitude towards the use of government websites and online appointment booking services in Hong Kong. The paper conducts hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses. First, the results shown that accuracy, completeness and convenience are positive determinants of citizens’ intentions to use both services. Then the paper tests the mediating role of transparency and trust and finds that completeness and personalization were fully mediated through transparency and trust. The model also includes the interaction terms and find significant moderating effects of transparency and trust.

One of this paper’s contributions is that it draws from multiple streams of research to identify factors that may affect citizens’ use of e-government services. It investigates the mediating and moderating role of transparency and trust, which has not been studied before.

Ganco (2013) examines the relationship between knowledge complexity and employee mobility/entrepreneurship. The author argues that the knowledge gained in a prior firm significantly affects the choice of an inventor on the next move between staying, moving, and starting-up. More specifically, the complexity of knowledge works as a contingent factor to determine the modes of the next move in terms of mobility vs. entrepreneurship and individual vs. team mobility.

The empirical findings are just as intuitively expected. The inventors with highly complex knowledge are less likely to move to competing firms possibly because complexity inhibits knowledge diffusion. Furthermore, the inventors with highly complex knowledge in prior firms are more likely to start their ventures than to move to rivals. This is probably because transferring complex knowledge across the boundary of a firm is challenging while starting from a clean sheet can be more effective and efficient to appropriate the value of knowledge. In addition, highly complex knowledge tends to strengthen the tendency of co-inventors to move or start up as a team because a partial knowledge of an individual may not be enough to leverage the knowledge in a new setting.

All in all, this study carves out an interesting contingent factor in employee mobility and entrepreneurship, which can be generalizable in many knowledge-intensive industries.