Technological frames

Interpreting technology: Use and non-use of doctor-patient video consultations in Danish general practice

This study uses socio-cognitive theory on technological frames to understand how and why general practitioners in Denmark use or choose not to use video consultations. Video consultations play a vital role in the digitalisation of the Danish healthcare system. Whilst political decision-makers continuously push for increased use of video consultations, uptake accounts for less than 2% of all consultations. Research is needed that explores the actual circumstances and conditions of video consultation use. Our data corpus consists of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted from August 2021 to August 2022 with 27 Danish general practitioners. Interviews were analysed following reflexive thematic analysis. Our findings show that video consultations are interpreted as 1) compromising occupational values, 2) a crisis tool, 3) the future, and 4) a tool to improve work conditions. Video consultations are differently adopted across clinics due to different interpretations of the technology and its relative advantage in specific clinical contexts. We argue that the concept of technological frames offers a useful analytic perspective for elucidating and anticipating attitudes and actions towards a technology. It increases our understanding of the uptake and rejection of video consultations. This knowledge is valuable for clinicians and politicians working with technological innovation in general practice.

Framing the pandemic: Multiplying "crises" in Dutch healthcare governance during the emerging COVID-19 pandemic

In this paper we explore the impact of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic on the governance of healthcare in the Netherlands. In doing so, we re-examine the idea that a crisis necessarily leads to processes of transition and change by focusing on crisis as a specific language of organizing collective action instead. Framing a situation as a crisis of a particular kind allows for specific problem definitions, concurrent solutions and the inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders. Using this perspective, we examine the dynamics and institutional tensions involved in governing healthcare during the pandemic. We make use of multi-sited ethnographic research into the Dutch healthcare crisis organization as it responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on decision-making at the regional level. We tracked our participants through successive waves of the pandemic between March 2020 and August 2021 and identified three dominant framings of the pandemic-as-crisis: a crisis of scarcity, a crisis of postponed care and a crisis of acute care coordination. In this paper, we discuss the implications of these framings in terms of the institutional tensions that arose in governing healthcare during the pandemic: between centralized, top-down crisis management and local, bottom-up work; between informal and formal work; and between existing institutional logics.

Utopian or dystopian? The portrayal of the metaverse in popular news on social media

The metaverse has sparked lots of interest worldwide as many giant tech companies are pursuing this futuristic idea. However, it has not been properly studied empirically by social science scholars yet. Considering the vital role played by media frames in affecting people's attitudes and behaviors towards the technology, this study examined the framing of the metaverse in popular news across Social Network Sites (SNSs) by cluster analyzing Entman's four operational frame elements. It identified five frames: economic prospect frame, unwanted future frame, consumer prospect frame, threatening future frame, and probable future frame. Overall, findings suggest a polarized framing of the metaverse on social media. While the majority of voices about the metaverse are optimistic, there is also a strong negative and dystopian perspective in more than one third of the SNS news. This positive or negative one-sided framing of the metaverse on SNSs may therefore fragmentize and polarize the audience, rather than informing in a balanced way. Implications for future research are discussed.

Framing the virus: The political, economic, biomedical and social understandings of the COVID-19 in Taiwan

The purpose of this paper is to study how people use texts and languages to interpret or make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on the theoretical literature of framing perspectives to formulate our arguments that consider the virus a socially constructed reality. We use Taiwan as an empirical case study, using topic modeling analysis of newspaper articles. Our findings show that the language of the COVID-19 coverage combines the four frames of political evaluation, economic impact, biomedical science and social life in varying proportions. These frames are subject to changes in pandemic conditions. Implications for theory and practice are presented.

Green IT Meaning in Energy Monitoring Practices: The Case of Danish Households

Eco-conferences like COP26 in Glasgow (UK) in 2021 have brought the debate on energy consumption and climate change to the fore. Given that a third of the energy produced worldwide is consumed in the home, it is pertinent to investigate how households use emerging technologies that allow households to monitor their energy consumption. This paper investigates how Danish households use green IT to monitor and manage their energy use and studies the related meaning householders attach to the green IT. We present qualitative data collected through interviews with 14 households, electric car owners mostly, who have adopted an application to monitor green energy availability - and its derived consumption. The paper highlights these householders' green energy monitoring practices with an emphasis on the meaning they make of the green IT application they used. Our study found that households can use more green energy without interacting continuously with the green IT application. This contrasts with a common assumption in the field of green IT design that consumers must continuously engage with the green IT to consume more green energy. We also posit that including householders in future green IT design is paramount for designing successful green IT applications. Finally, this paper calls for household energy consumption studies to view energy consumption as a service where specific practices are matched to energy sources - rather than viewing energy availability as a solitary incident.

“Collaborating” with AI: Taking a System View to Explore the Future of Work

In the wake of media hype about artificial intelligence (AI)/human collaboration, organizations are investing considerable resources into developing and using AI. In this paper, we draw on theories of technology in organizations to frame new directions for the study of what it means to work “with” AI. Drawing on prior literature, we consider how interactions between users and AI might unfold through theoretical lenses which cast technology as a tool and as a medium. Reflecting on how AI technologies diverge from technologies studied in the past, we propose a new perspective, which considers technology as a counterpart in a system of work that includes its design, implementation, and use. This perspective encourages developing a grounded understanding of how AI intersects with work, and therefore ethnography, building on thick descriptions, is an apt approach. We argue that relational ethnographic approaches can assist organization theorists in navigating the methodological challenges of taking a counterpart perspective and propose several strategies for future research.

Why developers matter: The case of patient portals

Existing studies on patient data portals are informative with respect to the patient and physician perspectives, yet relatively little attention has been paid to the role of developers. This case study focuses on how developers view the meaning and purpose of patient portals and how their perspective differs from that of physicians. The findings show that developers and physicians have different views on whether and how the portals can help achieve transparency, efficiency, and patient empowerment. This misalignment emerges because each group makes sense of the portal through a different frame of how they see patient data, medical work, and patient behavior. The study also finds that developers cope with the frame differences by engaging in practices of coproducing, bypassing, and reframing. The implication of the study is that technological frame analysis needs to incorporate the growing complexity and institutional character of modern technology, the diversity of target groups it serves, and their corresponding frames. The study also suggests that developers, instead of being seen as mere operational IT support, may need to be seen as strategically important actor groups for healthcare organizations-since their practices matter for the strategic agenda of transforming healthcare into a more patient-centric practice.

Impact of big data analytics on banking: a case study

Purpose

The paper aims to help enterprises gain valuable knowledge about big data implementation in practice and improve their information management ability, as they accumulate experience, to reuse or adapt the proposed method to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Design/methodology/approach

Guided by the theory of technological frames of reference (TFR) and transaction cost theory (TCT), this paper describes a real-world case study in the banking industry to explain how to help enterprises leverage big data analytics for changes. Through close integration with bank's daily operations and strategic planning, the case study shows how the analytics team frame the challenge and analyze the data with two analytic models – customer segmentation (unsupervised) and product affinity prediction (supervised), to initiate the adoption of big data analytics in precise marketing.

Findings

The study reported relevant findings from a longitudinal data analysis and identified some key success factors. First, non-technical factors, for example intuitive analytics results, appropriate evaluation baseline, multiple-wave implementation and selection of marketing channels critically influence big data implementation progress in organizations. Second, a successful campaign also relies on technical factors. For example, the clustering analytics could promote customers' response rates, and the product affinity prediction model could boost efficient transaction and lower time costs.

Originality/value

For theoretical contribution, this paper verified that the outstanding characteristics of online mutual fund platforms brought up by Nagle, Seamans and Tadelis (2010) could not guarantee organizations' competitive advantages from the aspect of TCT.

The effects of digital nativity on nonvolitional routine and innovative usage

Purpose

This study explores the differences between digital immigrants (DIs) and digital natives (DNs) in the continuance of routine and innovative information system use.

Design/methodology/approach

A quantitative survey was conducted with two different samples comprising 100 DIs and 152 DNs in mandatory information system use contexts. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling to examine the hypothesized relationships in the research model.

Findings

Results revealed differences among digital nativity groups. The effect of confirmation of expectations about system use on satisfaction is stronger for DNs whereas the effect on task–technology fit (TTF) is similar in both digital groups. Interestingly, significant differences between digital nativity groups occur in routine use. For DIs, TTF and habit are significant while for DNs, satisfaction significantly affects routine use. The results show no difference between digital native groups regarding innovative use.

Originality/value

This study extends the concept of digital nativity to routine and innovative system use, contributing to an enhanced understanding about the differences in information systems continuance (ISC) based on digital nativity. It also provides a fine-grained discussion of how to classify digital nativity and its impact in working contexts and extends the IS continuance model by considering two types of IS usage.

The making of digitalization: Like nailing jelly to a wall

Though ‘digitalization’ has become a buzzword and policy objective in public-sector development, the struggle to grasp and define it as a modern phenomenon continues. Furthermore, research has long shown that it is difficult to extract the value with which digitalization is associated. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to uncover the enactment by a specific set of actors of digitalization as production and reproduction practices. We interviewed a group of governmentally sanctioned regional digitalization coordinators to identify how digitalization was translated and implemented by the appointed professionals. We applied Orlikowski and Gash’s three levels of technology (nature, strategy, and use) and combined these with Feenberg’s matrix of four views on technology to produce an analytical framework. Our findings show that the making of digitalization can be described as like ‘nailing jelly to a wall’, owing to the lack description of its capabilities and functionalities, coupled with a raison d’etre that is highly elusive beyond ‘change’, in very general terms.

Being ethically resilient during COVID-19: a cross-sectional study of Indian supply chain companies

Purpose

The present study aims to examine the relationship between techno-ethical orientation and ethical decision-making (EDM) in Indian supply chain companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to explore the moderating role of technological frames (TF) in the relationship between techno-ethical orientation and EDM.

Design/methodology/approach

The relationship between techno-ethical orientation and EDM is examined using correlation and regression analysis. The moderating effect of five dimensions of TFs (personal attitude, application value, organisational influence, supervisor influence and industry influence) is analysed using structural equation modelling.

Findings

The correlation coefficient between techno-ethical orientation and EDM is 0.513. Also, the regression coefficient (β = 0.213) is significant at 0.05, establishing a positive linkage between the two. R-square values showed a 45.2% variation in EDM is explained by techno-ethical orientation. Similarly, all variables of TFs have a positive and significant moderating effect on the relationship between techno-ethical orientation and EDM.

Originality/value

This is one of the pioneer studies exploring techno-ethical orientation’s impact on EDM in supply chain companies.

Can IT Resolve the Climate Crisis? Sketching the Role of an Anthropology of Digital Technology

How can an anthropology of digital technology contribute to our understanding of climate mitigating initiatives? Governments and private sector industries argue that climate mitigation must focus on “decoupling” economic growth from carbon emissions if we are to reduce climate impact while still maintaining a healthy economy. Most proponents of decoupling envisage that digitalization will play a central role in this operation. Critics, however, argue that IT has a large and often unacknowledged climate impact, while IT solutions also frequently bring new and unforeseen problems, particular or systemic. The challenge of decoupling is thus broader than the management of the relationship between the economy and the climate. As much as decoupling is about how we imagine that the climate crisis can be solved with technologies, trusting that they can create the changes we need, it is also about the cultural value of lifestyles that we do not want to change. Seeing the climate crisis from this perspective opens the door for an anthropology of digital technology, which allows us to approach decoupling as a matter of how sociocultural change is imagined in the spaces between IT, climate change and society. The article thus contributes to the qualitative social scientific literature on perceptions of change by focusing on some of the ways that implicit ideas of change are embedded in the promotion of digital technologies as solutions to climate change. In addition, it presents to a wider scientific audience the perspectives that an anthropologically inspired analytic may provide on this topic.

The Road Not Taken: Technological Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Innovations

When venturing into unfamiliar areas of technology, inventors face ex ante technological uncertainty, that is many possible alternative technological paths going forward and limited guidance from existing technological knowledge for predicting the likelihood that a given path will successfully result in an invention. I theorize, however, that this ex ante technological uncertainty becomes less apparent when evaluating inventions in hindsight. When one knows that a given technological path turned out to be successful ex post, it may be difficult to appreciate the ex ante plausibility of reasons to prefer alternative paths. As a result, inventions may seem more obvious to those evaluating inventions with the benefit of hindsight. My theory yields a counterintuitive implication; when inventors venture into less familiar areas of technology, there is a greater risk of evaluators overestimating obviousness due to hindsight bias. Empirical evidence comes from novel data on accepted and rejected patent applications, including hand-collected data from the text of applicant objections to obviousness rejections and examiners’ subsequent reversals of rejections in response to applicant objections.

The Acceptance of Telepresence Robots in Higher Education

While telepresence robots have increasingly become accepted in diverse settings, the research on their acceptance in educational contexts has been underdeveloped. This study analyzed how the use intention of telepresence robots can be influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and perceived risk for students, faculty, and staff in higher education. Survey data were collected from 60 participants with direct operator experience with a variety of telepresence robots deployed in a large research university in the Midwest region of the United States. Path analysis results indicated that perceived usefulness was the only significant direct predictor of use intention of telepresence robots. Both perceived ease of use and subjective norm had a significant positive effect on perceived usefulness. Subjective norm also had a significant positive indirect effect on use intention, mediated by perceived usefulness. Perceived risk had a negative effect on perceived ease of use. These findings indicated that the usefulness of robots was central to operators’ decisions to use telepresence robots. Therefore, design choice for telepresence robots should prioritize usefulness. Secondly, the design of telepresence robots should minimize complexity for the end user and minimize cognitive demand. Having nominal difficulty of use would also facilitate multiple embodiments by combining telepresence robots with other technologies to support more rich social interactions.

How IT Investments Help Hospitals Gain and Sustain Reputation in the Media: The Role of Signaling and Framing

Practice- and Policy-Oriented Abstract

Understanding how IT investments help organizations to build and sustain reputation is of particular relevance for healthcare practitioners and policy makers because patients are often unable to assess the quality of care, relying instead on the reputation of health service providers in the media, such as newspapers. As information intermediaries, journalists detect, aggregate, and translate the weaker signals for quality, such as state-of-the-art IT, that a hospital emanates. Our analysis of 152 hospital organizations in England, complemented by interviews with healthcare journalists, shows that journalists write less negatively about hospitals when healthcare organizations’ IT equipment investments are high. This implies that investments in IT equipment can buffer hospitals from negative press, thereby helping them to gain and maintain a strong reputation in the media. Practitioners and policy makers may incorporate the reputational effect of IT when making investment decisions and further amplify such IT investment through press releases, corporate reports, and media interactions.

On the sociopolitical configurations of digital identity principles

Digital identity systems are not devised for their own sake, rather they are developed by institutions as part of their pursuit of specific goals—such as economic, social, and developmental outcomes through enabling individual rights and facilitating access to basic services and entitlements. A growing number of organizations and institutions are advancing specific principles, frameworks, and “imaginaries” of what “good” digital identity looks like—yet it is often not clear how much influence they have or what their underlying worldview is to those designing, developing, and deploying these systems. This paper introduces sociopolitical configurations as a means of studying these underlying worldviews. Sociopolitical configurations combine elements from technological frames, expectations, and imaginations as well as developmental discourses to provide a basis for critically examining three key documents in this space.

An Examination of the Influences of Habit, Compatibility, and Experience on the Continued Use of Short-Form Video-Sharing Services

Short-form video-sharing services (SVSs) have rapidly grown in popularity in the recent years. Some evidence suggests that because users can quickly and easily create and consume on-demand content, SVSs are addictive, and they appeal to a wide audience. The literature describing this phenomenon is scant. In order to fill this gap, this study examines the roles of habit and compatibility on SVS continuance intention and the interaction of these relationships with user experience, using TikTok as a context. To this goal, data collected from 157 university-student TikTok users are analyzed using structural equation modeling to determine whether these factors shape their continuance decisions. The findings show that habit and compatibility positively affect continuance intention, while experience does not. The paper offers practical steps to increase continuance intention of current users. This study enhances SVS research by confirming that habit and compatibility are important influences on continuance usage decisions.

Domain analytic paradigm: a quarter century exploration of fundamental ideas in information science

Purpose

The conditions that domain analysis becomes an academic school of information science (IS) are mature. Domain analysis is one of the most important foundations of IS. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss metatheoretical and theoretical issues in the domain analytic paradigm in IS.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper conducts a systematic review of representative publications of domain analysis. The analysis considered degree theses, journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and other materials.

Findings

Domain analysis maintains that community is the new focus of IS research. Although domain analysis centers on the domain and community, theoretical concerns on the social and individual dimensions of IS are inherent in it by its using sociology as its important approach and socio-cognitive viewpoint. For these reasons domain analysis can integrate social–community–individual levels of IS discipline as a whole. The role of subject knowledge in IS is discussed from the perspective of domain analysis. Realistic pragmatism that forms the philosophical foundation of domain analysis is argued and the implications of these theories to IS are presented.

Originality/value

The intellectual evolving landscape of domain analysis during a quarter century is comprehensively reviewed. Over the past twenty-five years, domain analysis has established its academic status in the international IS circle. Being an important metatheory, paradigm and methodology, domain analysis becomes the theoretical foundation of IS research. This paper assesses the current state of domain analysis and shows the contributions of domain analysis to IS. It also aims to inspire further exploration.

Sustainable food supply chains: overcoming key challenges through digital technologies

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer a consolidative approach in exploring the potential contribution of digital technologies in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) for the sustainable performance of food supply chain business, through the circular economy concepts.

Design/methodology/approach

As a single case study, this qualitative, interpretivist research was based on one of the largest food producers in the United Kingdom. The research utilises semi-structured interviews and applies thematic analysis to offer rich insights into SSCM challenges and their relationship with the business performance, through ten in-depth interviews.

Findings

Findings derived from thematic analysis of the interview transcripts suggest four main critical success factors underpinning SSCM practices and businesses performance – i.e. business continuity, waste reduction, performance measurement approach, and organisational learning, which could use the help of digital technologies to improve. This led to seven propositions to be addressed in the future research.

Originality/value

This research offers real, practical insights into SSCM challenges, within the context of food supply chain and explores the potential of digital technologies in overcoming them. Accordingly, the primary contribution of this work is grounded in the identification of critical success factors in SSCM for food supply chains (FSC). Hence, this work contributes further to the literature on SSCM, as well as circular economy, by providing a study of a business in the context of the highly pertinent and valuable food industry.

Change of Processes in the COVID-19 Scenario: From Face-to-Face to Remote Teaching-Learning Systems

COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation in teaching-learning environments. Universities based on face-to-face models have had to quickly adapt their processes to ensure the success of remote teaching-learning systems in the last months. The growing demand for technological resources has meant an effort to understand the requirements and variables that affect students’ acceptance, intention to use, and adoption of these tools. This study aims to analyze students’ acceptance of online processes adopted by universities because of the COVID-19 scenario. Although this study is based on a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), it also considers other factors, such as perceived efficiency and satisfaction. A questionnaire was built and distributed to 313 students. The data were processed using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) method. The results indicate that 30.7% of the students improved their views of remote education using online systems. However, 49.9% of students do not believe that face-to-face teaching-learning education will be replaced by virtual teaching-learning education in the long term. Our findings confirm that the enriched TAM model built provides a useful theoretical approach to understanding and explaining users’ acceptance of remote learning environments when there is a need to rapidly migrate from face-to-face to online teaching-learning processes.

Feminist perspectives to artificial intelligence: Comparing the policy frames of the European Union and Spain

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a disruptive technology that has gained interest among scholars, politicians, public servants, and citizens. In the debates on its advantages and risks, issues related to gender have arisen. In some cases, AI approaches depict a tool to promote gender equality, and in others, a contribution to perpetuating discrimination and biases. We develop a theoretical and analytical framework, combining the literature on technological frames and gender theory to better understand the gender perspective of the nature, strategy, and use of AI in two institutional contexts. Our research question is: What are the assumptions, expectations and knowledge of the European Union institutions and Spanish government on AI regarding gender? Methodologically, we conducted a document analysis of 23 official documents about AI issued by the European Union (EU) and Spain to understand how they frame the gender perspective in their discourses. According to our analysis, despite both the EU and Spain have developed gender-sensitive AI policy frames, doubts remain about the definitions of key terms and the practical implementation of their discourses.

Gender blindness: On health and welfare technology, AI and gender equality in community care

Digital health and welfare technologies and artificial intelligence are proposed to revolutionise healthcare systems around the world by enabling new models of care. Digital health and welfare technologies enable remote monitoring and treatments, and artificial intelligence is proposed as a means of prediction instead of reaction to individuals' health and as an enabler of proactive care and rehabilitation. The digital transformation not only affects hospital and primary care but also how the community meets older people's needs. Community care is often provided by informal and formal care-givers, most of whom are women. Gender equality is at the heart of many national strategies, but do all genders have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities when it comes to community care and its digital transformation? The digital transformation of community care is entangled with how care is provided to older people and the working conditions of community-care professionals. Current and, even more so, future community-care systems are and will be partly constituted by networks of technological artefacts. These health and welfare technological artefacts and the discourse surrounding them mediate and constitute social relations and community care. This article looks into how health and welfare technology and artificial intelligence-based devices and systems mediate and constitute gender relations in community care and presents an argument for reflexivity, embodiment, pluralism, participation and ecology as an alternative strategy to treating community care as one-size-fit-all and being blind to gender-related issues.

Cognitive-affective appraisal of technostressors by ICT-based mobile workers and their impacts on technostrain

BACKGROUND: ICT based mobile working gives organizational flexibility, productivity and performance but at the same time it can lead to techno-stress and technostrain perceptions. A high level of technostrain amongst ICT-based mobile workers would impact their well-being, leading to lesser than expected gains from such organizational ICT investments. Given this paradox, we examine the actual transactional and relational stressor-strain coping response processes in this novel context. OBJECTIVE: The broad research aim of this paper is to explain the relative importance of the cognitive and affective processes used amongst ICT-based mobile workers when coping with technostressors. METHODS: Specifically, based on technology frames literature, we develop dual-path serial mediation models, showing the relationships between technostress-technostrain via two processes: (a) the primary cognitive appraisal process mobilization (threat/opportunity technology frame) and (b) the secondary affective resource process mobilization (affect towards ICT use) to account for technostrain perceptions. We use survey data from 165 ICT-based mobile managers from diverse work settings to empirically confirm the theorized models. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: A predominant cognitive ‘threat frames’ leads to increase in technostrain, which decreases if ‘affective resource’ is available for coping. This relationship is inverse in the case of ‘opportunity frames’ path, as technostrain perceptions decreases with and without affective resource mobilization. Implications to theory, practice and methods are also discussed.

THE CHALLENGES OF STRATEGIC INNOVATION: ACHIEVING OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Organisations are spending substantial resources on implementing product and process innovations. It is, therefore, important to evaluate if the implementation of those innovations substantially improves the effectiveness of business operations, meets the organisation’s expectations, and gains a sustainable competitive advantage.

Quantitative data from 250 questionnaires were analysed using structural equation modelling. Respondents were selected from several industries in Colombia. Initial findings suggest that strategies have an indirect impact on operational effectiveness through the success of the organisational learning process. However, the organisations investigated lack the appropriate application of linkages and process innovation to achieve operational effectiveness and, therefore, sustainable competitiveness.

The paper offers useful insights for organisations when implementing innovation initiatives. It also provides information for Colombian Government institutions on developing mechanisms, economic policy strategies, and business support services for enhancing the economic and commercial viability of Colombian companies in the manufacturing and service sectors. The studied organisations need to redefine the role of linkages and process innovation to complement organisational learning, as all the three dimensions together are required to foster operational effectiveness.

A review of theories and models applied in studies of social media addiction and implications for future research

With the increasing use of social media, the addictive use of this new technology also grows. Previous studies found that addictive social media use is associated with negative consequences such as reduced productivity, unhealthy social relationships, and reduced life-satisfaction. However, a holistic theoretical understanding of how social media addiction develops is still lacking, which impedes practical research that aims at designing educational and other intervention programs to prevent social media addiction. In this study, we reviewed 25 distinct theories/models that guided the research design of 55 empirical studies of social media addiction to identify theoretical perspectives and constructs that have been examined to explain the development of social media addiction. Limitations of the existing theoretical frameworks were identified, and future research areas are proposed.

Technological and informational frames: explaining age-related variation in the use of patient accessible electronic health records as technology and information

Purpose

Data from a national patient survey (N = 1,155) of the Swedish PAEHR “Journalen” users were analysed, and an extended version of the theory of technological frames was developed to explain the variation in the technological and informational framing of information technologies found in the data.

Design/methodology/approach

Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records (PAEHRs) are implemented globally to address challenges with an ageing population. However, firstly, little is known about age-related variation in PAEHR use, and secondly, user perceptions of the PAEHR technology and the health record information and how the technology and information–related perceptions are linked to each other. The purpose of this study is to investigate these two under-studied aspects of PAEHRs and propose a framework based on the theory of technological frames to support studying the second aspect, i.e. the interplay of information and technology–related perceptions.

Findings

The results suggest that younger respondents were more likely to be interested in PAEHR contents for general interest. However, they did not value online access to the information as high as older ones. Older respondents were instead inclined to use medical records information to understand their health condition, prepare for visits, become involved in their own healthcare and think that technology has a much potential. Moreover, the oldest respondents were more likely to consider the information in PAEHRs useful and aimed for them but to experience the technology as inherently difficult to use.

Research limitations/implications

The sample excludes non-users and is not a representative sample of the population of Sweden. However, although the data contain an unknown bias, there are no specific reasons to believe that it would differently affect the survey's age groups.

Practical implications

Age should be taken into account as a key factor that influences perceptions of the usefulness of PAEHRs. It is also crucial to consider separately patients' views of PAEHRs as a technology and of the information contained in the EHR when developing and evaluating existing and future systems and information provision for patients.

Social implications

This study contributes to bridging the gap between information behaviour and systems design research by showing how the theory of technological frames complemented with parallel informational frames to provide a potentially powerful framework for elucidating distinct conceptualisations of (information) technologies and the information they mediate. The empirical findings show how information and information technology needs relating to PAEHRs vary according to age. In contrast to the assumptions in much of the earlier work, they need to be addressed separately.

Originality/value

Few earlier studies focus on (1) age-related variation in PAEHR use and (2) user perceptions of the PAEHR technology and the health record information and how the technology and information–related perceptions are linked to each other.

Caring for Computers: The Hidden Work of Clinical Nurses during the Introduction of Health Information Systems in a Teaching Hospital in Taiwan

Implementing health information systems for enhancing patient care and management occurs worldwide. Discovering how nurses, as important system end-users, experience technology-reliant clinical practice involved focus groups (n = 25) and in-depth individual interviews with nurses (n = 4) and informatics staff (n = 3) in a major Taiwanese medical center. This qualitative study explores the unintended effects of these systems on nurses’ role and clinical practice. First, nurses’ additional role caring for computer devices supporting patient care involves highly-demanding invisible effort, especially when tackling system malfunctions affecting patients with urgent conditions. Second, nurses are resourceful in developing solutions to protect patients during unexpected technical malfunctions. Third, troubleshooting using telephone technical support as the first resort is problematic. It is argued that computerization requires nurses to care for co-clients: patients and computers. Managing technical malfunctions is an unintended consequence for nurses, reflecting the hidden work required by new technology.

Theorizing Actor Interactions Shaping Innovation in Digital Infrastructures: The Case of Residential Internet Development in Belarus

This paper focuses on how digital innovation develops in ecologies of distributed heterogeneous actors with contesting logics, diverse technologies, and various forms of orchestrations. Drawing on the insights from emerging theories of digital innovation augmented by an institutional logics perspective, we examine a case study of how residential internet infrastructure was shaped over 20 years by the interplay of self-organized residential communities, corporate internet service providers (ISPs), and a state ISP. Our analysis of this case leads to the identification of four types of interactions that shape the trajectories of digital infrastructure development beyond direct actor interplays and competitive or collaborative relationships. We label these interactions symbiotic generative, symbiotic mutualistic, parasitic complementary, and parasitic competitive and explain the processes and conditions of their development and their innovation outcomes. Drawing on these findings, we develop a model of symbiotic and parasitic interactions shaping digital infrastructure development and identify key characteristics of the ecologies where these emerge. The case study and the model that emerged aim to contribute to the growing field of research on complex and nonlinear paths of digital innovation development constituted by the dynamics of its distributed agency. The article concludes by highlighting avenues for future research.

Appropriating Information Technology Artefacts through Trial and Error: The Case of the Tablet

The concept of appropriation is of paramount importance for the lasting use of an Information Technology (IT) artefact following its initial adoption, and therefore its success. However, quite often, users' original expectations are negatively disconfirmed, and instead of appropriating the IT artefact, they discontinue its use. In this study we examine the use of IT artefacts following negative disconfirmation and use Grounded Theory Method techniques to analyse 136 blogposts, collected between March 2011 - July 2017, to investigate how users appropriate or reject the tablet when technology falls short of users' expectations. Our findings show that users overcome negative disconfirmation through a trial and error process. In doing so, we identify that users appropriate the tablet when the attained benefits significantly outweigh the risks or sacrifices stemming out of its use. We discuss our contribution within the context of the appropriation literature, and highlight that the success of IT lies with the user's success in identifying personal use scenarios within and across diverse contexts of use.

Understanding Clinicians' Adoption of Mobile Health Tools: A Qualitative Review of the Most Used Frameworks

BACKGROUND

Although there is a push toward encouraging mobile health (mHealth) adoption to harness its potential, there are many challenges that sometimes go beyond the technology to involve other elements such as social, cultural, and organizational factors.

OBJECTIVE

This review aimed to explore which frameworks are used the most, to understand clinicians' adoption of mHealth as well as to identify potential shortcomings in these frameworks. Highlighting these gaps and the main factors that were not specifically covered in the most frequently used frameworks will assist future researchers to include all relevant key factors.

METHODS

This review was an in-depth subanalysis of a larger systematic review that included research papers published between 2008 and 2018 and focused on the social, organizational, and technical factors impacting clinicians' adoption of mHealth. The initial systematic review included 171 studies, of which 50 studies used a theoretical framework. These 50 studies are the subject of this qualitative review, reflecting further on the frameworks used and how these can help future researchers design studies that investigate the topic of mHealth adoption more robustly.

RESULTS

The most commonly used frameworks were different forms of extensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; 17/50, 34%), the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI; 8/50, 16%), and different forms of extensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (6/50, 12%). Some studies used a combination of the TAM and DOI frameworks (3/50, 6%), whereas others used the consolidated framework for implementation research (3/50, 6%) and sociotechnical systems (STS) theory (2/50, 4%). The factors cited by more than 20% of the studies were usefulness, output quality, ease of use, technical support, data privacy, self-efficacy, attitude, organizational inner setting, training, leadership engagement, workload, and workflow fit. Most factors could be linked to one framework or another, but there was no single framework that could adequately cover all relevant and specific factors without some expansion.

CONCLUSIONS

Health care technologies are generally more complex than tools that address individual user needs as they usually support patients with comorbidities who are typically treated by multidisciplinary teams who might even work in different health care organizations. This special nature of how the health care sector operates and its highly regulated nature, the usual budget deficits, and the interdependence between health care organizations necessitate some crucial expansions to existing theoretical frameworks usually used when studying adoption. We propose a shift toward theoretical frameworks that take into account implementation challenges that factor in the complexity of the sociotechnical structure of health care organizations and the interplay between the technical, social, and organizational aspects. Our consolidated framework offers recommendations on which factors to include when investigating clinicians' adoption of mHealth, taking into account all three aspects.