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Realizing or appropriating value from individual firm-level IT investments has been a recurring theme in the IS literature for decades. Further, failure rates related to IT investments have been high for many years. However, realizing value from IT in settings where numerous organizations need to work together to co-develop sizable digital platforms has been undertheorized and/or hobbled with conflated theoretical constructs. To address this dearth of novel theory and accompanying empiricism, high-quality processes such as benefits management have been suggested in the scientific literature and have gained substantial interest in practice as a means for organizations to structure their routines and processes in ways that actually capture value. The complexity of this challenge suggests that there should be a renewed theoretical effort in IS to reconceptualize several extant scholarly streams. We address this challenge first by deconstructing traditional scholarly frameworks into a moderated theoretical model of multi-creation and multi-realization of IT value termed "MUIT." The first construct in the model is based on the resource-based view; then, the model is further informed by appropriation theory, adaptive structuration theory, network governance theory, and, finally, the benefits management literature. Our variance model is a Type IV theory according to Gregor's typology--a theory for explaining and predicting how largescale strategic consortia can collaborate to realize greater value from IT than they could in isolation. Regarding praxis, we contribute to the understanding of how interorganizational resources and capabilities, relationships, and value realization can be spring-boarded into both successful large-scale platforms and superior realization of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun instituting pay-for-performance incentives that reward hospitals based on patient-centric outcomes such as patient satisfaction. Further, to promote the “meaningful use” of health information technology (HIT), CMS has been prompting hospitals to adopt and use HITs. Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) is one such HIT and is designed to improve coordination in patient care teams and consequently patient outcomes. We explore the impact of CPOE-enabled coordination on patient satisfaction with the care team. In a departure from prior research that has tended to treat the team as all clinicians within a hospital unit/clinic, we conceptualize (and operationalize) patient care teams as ad hoc and patient-specific and thus comprised of those clinicians having direct contact with the patient. In a further departure from prior research that has employed lean measures of IS use (e.g., use intentions, duration, or frequency of use), we respond to the call for rich measures of IS use by conceptualizing deep structure use (DSU) of CPOE as patient care team-level usage of CPOE features. We draw upon adaptive structuration theory (AST) to identify faithfulness of appropriation (FOA) and consensus on appropriation (COA) as two related, but distinct, aspects of CPOE appropriation by patient care teams that affect DSU. We also draw on relational coordination theory to conceptualize communicative coordination (CC) as team communication for coordination purposes and theorize that DSU affects patient satis-faction through CC and informating the patient differentially across high/low patient mortality risk conditions. Based on data from 224 patient care teams caring for both low and high patient mortality risk conditions, our results indicate that FOA and COA are salient predictors of DSU, and that the effect of COA on DSU is mediated by FOA. We also observed a significant indirect effect of DSU on patient satisfaction (as mediated by communicative coordination and patient informating), but only for high patient mortality risk conditions. Our findings are important because they show that by using CPOE in a comprehensive manner, patient care team members are better able to coordinate patient care and are able to better inform the patient about their care,ultimately leading to improved patient satisfaction. Additional implications for HIT research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that the use of technology is structured not only by users, technology, and social context, but also by onlookers (i.e., actors for whom the use is visible, but who are not directly involved in the activities of use themselves). Building on the “technology-in-practice” lens and insights of an ethnographic study in operating rooms where nurses used mobile technology for various work-related and recreational purposes, we show how onlookers contribute to structuring collective patterns of technology use. We conceptualize their role as the onlooker effect, which means that onlookers’ inferences, judgments, and reactions trigger users to reflect on consequences and adjust the use in front of others, a phenomenon which is activated by the cues unintentionally given off when using technology. By identifying the role of onlookers in technology use, this study goes beyond user-centric and feature-centric perspectives on information technology use, illustrating that it does not happen in a physical vacuum, but often draws in unintended audiences. The onlooker effect provides a more in-depth explanation for unexpected patterns of technology use emerging in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much prior research on virtual teams has examined the impact of the features and capabilities of different communication tools (the nature of communication) on team performance. In this paper, we examine how the social structures (i.e., genre rules) that emerge around different communication tools (the nurture of communication) can be as important in influencing performance. During habitual use situations, team members enact genre rules associated with communication tools without conscious thought via automaticity. These genre rules influence how teams interact and ultimately how well they perform. We conducted an experimental study to examine the impact of different genre rules that have developed for two communication tools: instant messenger and discussion forum. Our results show that in habitual use situations, these tools triggered different genre rules with different behaviors, which in turn resulted in significantly different decision quality. We used heightened time pressure as a discrepant event to interrupt the automatic enactment of habitual genre rules and found that users adopted similar behaviors for both tools, which resulted in no significant differences in decision quality. These findings suggest that the automatic enactment of genre rules for a communication tool may have as powerful an effect on behavior and performance as the actual features of the tool itself. We believe that our results, taken together with past research showing the effects of social structures on communication, call for the expansion of task-technology fit theories to include the role of social structures in explaining the use of and performance from communication tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marshall Scott Poole identifies some important issues in the treatment of adaptive structuration theory in our review of the use of Giddens's structuration theory in IS research (Jones and Karsten 2008). We argue, however, that a number of his criticisms reflect differences in our respective use of particular terms and that the statements made in Jones and Karsten are reasonable, especially in the light of Giddens's own writings. There are some substantive differences between our position and that of Poole, though, especially in relation to the distinctiveness and compatibility of positivist and interpretive research, and the immateriality of Giddens's structures. Arguments are presented to show that, as Jones and Karsten discussed, Giddens's position is able to offer a plausible and self-consistent account of IS phenomena, including those such as the role of material artefacts in the U.S. legal system, "distributed cognition," and the use of GDSS that Poole suggests are incompatible with Giddens's account of structuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of the contemporary British sociologist Anthony Giddens, and in particular his structuration theory, has been widely cited by Information Systems researchers. This paper presents a critical review of the work of Giddens and its application in the Information Systems field. Following a brief overview of Giddens's work as a whole, some key aspects of structuration theory are described, and their implications for Information Systems research discussed. We then identify 331 Information Systems articles published between 1983 and 2004 that have drawn on Giddens's work and analyze their use of structuration theory. Based on this analysis a number of features of structurational research in the Information Systems field and its relationship to Giddens's ideas are discussed. These findings offer insight on Information Systems researchers' use of social theory in general and suggest that there may be significant opportunities for the Information Systems field in pursuing structurational research that engages sympathetically, yet critically, with Giddens's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a field study of six medical project teams that worked together in meetings over a seven-week period to develop plans to improve customer service within a hospital. Half the teams used a group support system (GSS), while the other half used traditional processes that were the habitual norms for this organization. In the teams using traditional project team processes, the leaders defined the teams' project goal directed discussions, recorded and controlled the teams' notes, assigned tasks to team members, and prepared and presented the teams' report. In the GSS teams, the leaders faced leadership challenges or abdicated, regular members participated to a greater extent, the project goal emerged from team discussion, and the teams' notes were open and widely distributed. In short, processes in the GSS teams were more participatory and democratic. At first, teams found the GSS-based meeting processes very uncomfortable and returned to traditional verbal discussion-based processes. Once they returned to these traditional processes, however, they found them uncomfortable and moved back to include more electronic communication-based processes. Participants' attitudes (satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, and cohesiveness) were initially lower in GSS teams, but gradually increased, until they equaled those of the traditional teams. There were significant differences in overall project outcomes: traditional teams developed conservative projects that met the unstated project agenda perceived by the team leaders. In contrast, GSS teams developed projects more closely aligned to the interests of team members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on cross-cultural software production and use, which is increasingly common in today's more globalized world. A theoretical basis for analysis is developed, using concepts drawn from structuration theory. The theory is illustrated using two cross-cultural case studies. It is argued that structurational analysis provides a deeper examination of cross-cultural working and IS than is found in the current literature, which is dominated by Hofstede-type studies. In particular, the theoretical approach can be used to analyze cross-cultural conflict and contradiction, cultural heterogeneity, detailed work patterns, and the dynamic nature of culture. The paper contributes to the growing body of literature that emphasizes the essential role of cross-cultural understanding in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]