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The purpose of this paper is to investigate nurses’ attitudes, perceptions, and reactions to a new point-of-care information system for documenting nursing care.

A design science research methodology (DSRM) was used to examine the feasibility and usability of a novel nursing informatics solution in the context of acute hospital care. Data were collected using focus groups and non-participant observations. Analyses were guided by the theoretical lens of actor-network theory (ANT).

The findings unpack an understanding of the potential value of a new technology, rather than a binary understanding of positive or negative value. Using the ANT lens, the study reveals the dynamics of the nurse-technology relationships and consequent disruptions throughout the translation process. The findings highlight the central role of negotiation in the socio-technical construction of the hybrid actor-network during the implementation of new technology in acute hospital contexts.

Further studies are needed to investigate the dynamics and complexity of the translation process that occurs during technology adoption, reactions of the involved actors to the emerging network and impacts on their role and work process.

Engaging nurses early during development and testing; aligning the new system’s functionality and interface with nurses’ interests and work practices; and supporting changes to clinical work process to enable an effective heterogeneous actor-network to emerge and become stable.

This study presents a novel use of ANT in a DSRM to understand an enterprise-wide system involving nurses and real clinical settings. The emerged actor-network provides insights into the translation process when nurses adapt to using new technology in their work.

This study investigated two key aspects: (1) how a hospital bundles limited resources for preventive care performance and (2) how to develop IS capabilities to enhance preventive care performance.

A case study method was adopted to examine how a hospital integrates its limited resources which leads to the need for resource bundles and an understanding of IS capabilities development to understand how they contribute to the delivery of preventive care in a Malaysian hospital.

This research proposes a comprehensive framework outlining resource-bundling and IS capabilities development to improve preventive care.

We acknowledge that the problem of transferring and generalizing results has been a common criticism of a single case study. However, our objective was to enhance the reader’s understanding by including compelling, detailed narratives demonstrating how our research results offer practical examples that can be generalized theoretically. The findings also apply to similar-sized public hospitals in Malaysia and other developing countries, facing challenges like resource constraints, HIS adoption levels, healthcare workforce shortages, cultural and linguistic diversity, bureaucratic hurdles, and specific patient demographics and health issues. Further, lessons from this context can be usefully applied to non-healthcare service sector domains.

This study provides a succinct strategy for enhancing preventive care in Malaysian public hospitals, focusing on system integration and alignment with hospital strategy, workforce diversity through recruitment and mentorship, and continuous training for health equity and inclusivity. This approach aims to improve resource efficiency, communication, cultural competence, and healthcare outcomes.

Efficiently using limited resources through HIS investment is essential to improve preventive care and reduce chronic diseases, which cause approximately nine million deaths annually in Southeast Asia, according to WHO. This issue has significantly impacted the socioeconomic development of developing countries.

This research refines resource orchestration theory with new mechanisms for resource mobilization, extends IS literature by identifying how strategic bundling forms specialized healthcare IS capabilities, enriches preventive care literature through actionable resource-bundling activities, and adds to HIS literature by advocating for an integrated, preventive care focus from the alignment of HIS design, people and institutional policies to address concerns raised by other research regarding the utilization of HIS in improving the quality of preventive care.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the disparities in social awareness and use of the internet between urban and rural school children in the North of Vietnam.

A total of 525 pupils, aged 9-11 years old, randomly selected from seven urban and rural schools, who are internet users, participated in the study and consented to responding to a questionnaire adapted from an equivalent European Union study. A comparative statistical analysis of the responses was then carried out, using IBM SPSS v21, which consisted of a descriptive analysis, an identification of personal self-development opportunities, as well as issues related to pupils’ digital prowess and knowledge of internet use and internet safety, including parental engagement in their offspring’s online activities.

The study highlights the fact that children from both the urban and rural regions of the North of Vietnam mostly access the internet from home, but with more children in the urbanized areas accessing it at school than their rural counterparts. Although children from the rural areas scored lower on all the internet indicators, such as digital access and online personal experience and awareness, there was no disparity in awareness of internet risks between the two sub-samples. It is noteworthy that there was no statistically significant gender difference towards online activities that support self-development. In relation to safe internet usage, children are likely to seek advice from their parents, rather than through teachers or friends. However, they are not yet provided with an effective safety net while exposing themselves to the digital world.

Although the Vietnamese national curriculum on the computer science subject does not explicitly cover the use of the internet and its related aspects, the majority of children who took part in this study claimed to have used the internet in their learning activities. This emphasises the urgent need for the Ministry of Education and educators in the country to not only improve information and communication technology facilities in schools, but also to revise the computer science curriculum in order to provide a supportive environment for learning development and collectively advocate the dynamics of internet use in order to ensure safe access and use by the children.

Currently the healthcare industry in the US is not only contending with relentless pressures to lower costs while maintaining and increasing the quality of service but is also under a stringent timeline to become compliant with the health insurance, portability and accountability act (HIPAA) regulatory requirements. Robust healthcare information systems (HCIS) become critical to enabling healthcare organizations address these challenges. Hence, it becomes an imperative need that the information that is captured, generated and disseminated by these HCIS be of the highest possible integrity and quality as well as compliant with regulatory requirements. This paper addresses this need by proposing an integrative framework for HIPAA compliant, I*IQ HCIS. It bases this framework on an integration of the requirements for HIPAA compliance, the principles of information integrity, as well as the healthcare quality aims set forth by the Committee on the Quality of Healthcare in America.

In their conceptualization of the principal/agent relationship, Jensen and Meckling were not referring to a knowledge worker (KW) agent. Agency theory is extended to the context of a KW agent to identify a key role for IS/IT in facilitating the monitoring function. To test this, the dynamics of a critical principal‐KW agent relationship in the health‐care industry are investigated. It is demonstrated that IS/IT goes beyond just alleviating the agency problem to enabling the KW agent to perform “self‐monitoring”. The results are significant for health care, agency relationships and the use of IS/IT with knowledge workers.

The last decade has seen much interest in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from successive UK Governments highlighting the importance of this sector to the wealth‐creating process of the UK economy. World‐class manufacturing (WCM) is a set of methodologies that are used by organisations to compete globally and continuously improve their competitiveness. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are now competing at a global level and many are world‐class. The majority of the companies that make up the OEM's supply chains are SMEs. It is, therefore, imperative that SMEs also improve their competitiveness to a world‐class level. This paper aims to address these issues.

The paper uses a triangulation methodology consisting of a literature review, analysis of a 150‐company survey and semi‐structured interviews in the development of the business process improvement (BPI) framework and performance assessment methodology (PAM) tool.

This study advocates a planned and integrated approach for the gradual achievement of WCM in SMEs by a strategy of BPI through continuous improvement and structured training.

The work is of value to SMEs since the study encapsulates the requirements of SME management into the BPI framework and considers their critique of present frameworks; hence a practical framework that is honed for SME application.

This paper fulfils an identified need for SMEs to achieve WCM status and offers a novel/practical framework and PAM tool which are timely because the DTI is promulgating the need for SMEs to become world‐class.

Agency theory is primarily concerned with the relationship between the principal (employer/purchaser) and the agent (employee/contractor) in the issue of goal‐aligned behavior. Jensen and Meckling and others were not referring to a knowledge worker agent in their conceptualization of the principal/agent relationship. The significance of having a knowledge worker agent is that the decision rights are no longer located with the principal but with the agent. This in turn has a tremendous bearing on goal alignment and agency problems. We propose that information systems/information technology (IS/IT), in particular enterprise wide systems, can alleviate these agency problems. We illustrate this through a case example from health care, an industry with a high proportion of knowledge worker agents.

Knowledge management systems are predominant in both theory and practice. However, are the same systems discussed in theory actualized in practice? By comparing and contrasting knowledge management systems in theory and practice, this paper demonstrates that they are indeed dissimilar. In theory, they have both subjective and objective components. In practice, only the objective component appears to be actualized; hence, these systems in practice are essentially organizational memory systems at best and not knowledge management systems at all. By unravelling the mystique of knowledge management systems, this paper exposes a fundamental anomaly. Further, an apparent void currently in practice is highlighted; namely, the lack of the subjective component of knowledge management systems in practice. They are being heralded as key systems that are vital for organizations to survive and thrive in the intense competitive environment of the information age. Surely then, a system that in practice supports not only the objective component, but also the subjective component of knowledge management, would indeed be a truly powerful system.

This paper aims to use the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin to reveal new insights into the role and impact of social media in health-care settings.

With the help of Bakhtin’s constructs of dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia and carnival, the power and influences of the social media phenomenon in health-care settings, are explored.

It is apparent from the in-depth analysis conducted that there is a delicate balance between the need to increase dialogue and the need to safeguard public health, in the use of social media for health-related communication. Bakhtin‘s constructs elucidate this delicate balance and highlight the need for health-care providers that use social media to find the right balance between these competing communicational priorities.

This paper advances a nascent theoretical approach to social media research. By applying Bakhtinian ideas to consumer health informatics, this paper has the potential to open a new approach to theorizing the role of social software in health-care settings. Stakeholders in digital health will find this paper useful, as it opens up dialogue to further discuss the role of social media in health care.