Transitioning towards an improved I.T. security culture in organizations

The study developed a model to help Australian organisations transition toward an improved IT security culture. The IT Security Culture Transition Model improved organisations' IT security awareness, knowledge, attitude and behaviour allowing them to better protect their IT security. The model can be implemented face-to-face and as an e-learning program.

Daring to Care : is spirituality sustainable in organizations providing healthcare?

Healthcare workers are challenged to dare to care enough to provide a service that is holistic. This involves being in tune with their own spirituality and the spiritual needs of their patients or clients. Spirituality and compassion are important concepts in the ministry of nurses and other health professionals. Compassion also has links with mercy, although there is debate as to whether mercy is the same as compassion for deserving or undeserving sufferers. However, healthcare workers need to care for sufferers even if their suffering is not deserved, where such compassion is intrinsic and/or out of duty. It involves acting altruistically. Faith-based organizations are best equipped to undertake this holistic ministry but as they are becoming increasingly reliant on government funding to help finance expensive health services they encounter rationalistic pressures from these funding sources may restrict the way they deliver these services. Decision and policymakers are encouraged to embrace altruistic values rather than the egoistic values of economic rationalism, not least because the nature of healthcare has an inherent emphasis on altruistic emotions, especially compassion.

Contexts of relevance in explanatory case studies in information systems : ubiquitous information technology implementation in organizations

Case studies of the organizational implementation of traditional business computing have often emphasized the importance of context in research design and data analysis. The emergence of computing phenomena that pervade different contexts within and even beyond the organizational boundary suggests the need to disaggregate the notion of context to allow for finer levels of contextual analysis. Indeed we demonstrate that a failure to consider interdependent levels of context in organizational case studies of computing technologies that even approach ubiquity runs the risk of partial and even incorrect conclusions being drawn. We illustrate this argument by means of two explanatory case studies of intranet and mobile technology implementation in organizations. Based on the extant literature on context in case study design and examples drawn from the cases, we propose a range of interconnected and interrelated contexts to consider in the research design of explanatory cases of ubiquitous technology implementation in organizations.

The implementation of mobile technology in organizations : expanding individual use contexts

Mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants, smart mobile phones, and other handheld computing devices hold much promise in terms of their organizational application. Many existing models of the individual acceptance and implementation of information technology in organizational contexts have been developed in the era of “at the office” computing such as MIS, office automation, groupware, and so forth. We conducted two in-depth case studies of the implementation of mobile technology in healthcare organizations. The studies highlight interrelated individual use contexts due to the mobility of the technology: the individual as employee, as professional, as private user, and as member of society. The cases show that influences emanating from these use contexts impacted on the individual adoption of the technology within the organization. While broad extra-organizational influences are incorporated in some existing individual technology adoption models, we show that it becomes relevant to accommodate these influences more specifically in research models of mobile computing in organizations. Based on the extant literature and the case study data we pave the way toward more comprehensive models of the adoption and implementation of mobile technologies in organizations.

Supporting emotion communication in information systems

Society is becoming increasingly reliant on Information Systems to meet its everyday communication requirements, yet many current implementations lack support for important conversational cues. One such cue is emotion communication. Emotion communication carries with it many signals that affect our behaviour, the interpretation of the message and provide a catalyst to other forms of communication such as empathy and the formation of social ties. Emotion itself can affect the very decision to communicate, or the way in which one may respond to a given communication. To explore the ways in which systems may better support emotion communication between members of a social group, a cloud-based information system was developed and trialled which both large and small groups. This paper presents results on how Information Systems can best support emotion communication in social groups.