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In the contemporary competitive environment, healthcare providers have had to ensure that their customers are satisfied with the quality of medical service they receive as this is critical in customer retention and their repeated use of the service of the healthcare provider. Taking the patient's perspective, several studies have attempted to identify the determinants of patient satisfaction and their loyalty toward healthcare providers. Studies have yielded mixed results and to get a clearer understanding of these relationships, we perform a meta-analysis of 13 studies to test nine hypotheses. We discuss the implications of the results.

Electronic Government (e-Government) refers to a system of information, communication and interaction between government and its citizens. E-Government adoption has been studied for more than a decade with several meta-analytic studies being produced in that time. This study is differentiated from prior meta-analyses as it splits the empirical studies into pre-adoption and post-adoption studies to allow a clearer model of e-Government. We found different determinants and distinct models for pre- and post-adoption of e-Government. In the two models (pre-adoption and post-adoption) trust is only related to pre-adoption studies. Originally, 98 studies were coded but with the focus on pre-adoption and post-adoption, 53 were used in the final models as they contained the attributes of interest.

In this article, the application of the UK doctrine of fiscal nullity by the Supreme Court is considered in light of the twin decisions in the cases of UBS AG v. IRC1 and DB Group Services (UK) Ltd v. IRC.2 This article argues that fiscal nullity is not a separate doctrine of taxation but can be explained in the way the facts are proven in a tax case, in the way that legal transactions are characterized and how the legislation is interpreted and applied. Using this as the conceptual framework of the paper, prior fiscal nullity cases have been analysed and decisions explained with a focus on different stages of the framework. UBS and DB Group Services findings relate to all three stages of the conceptual framework. Stage 1 requires that the court view the background ‘matrix of fact’ in a very objective manner. Stage 2 is the construction of the legal relations and the application of the statute particularly around the concept of ‘restricted security.’ Stage 3 concerns the purposive interpretation of ‘restricted security’ within the meaning of the legislation (section 425(2) ITEPA (UK)). Consequently, the decision in these two cases is not a departure from prior decisions.

Organizations are keen to obtain as much value as they can from their information systems (IS) investments. While the first-order benefits of new information systems are usually obtained when they are used routinely, the full potential of new systems is only unlocked when they are used deeply. While the support of managers and peers can encourage individuals to use systems more deeply, the latter’s lack of technical know-how means that they may not be able to allay fears or doubts that arise as they improvise and experiment with new systems to infuse them into their work processes. We use social cognitive theory to frame infusion as a learning process, where individuals model their behavior based on the behaviors of others they observe in the environment and the resources available. We argue that individual users succeed in infusing new systems into their work when they interact with IS professionals. This interaction allows users to observe the actions of IS professionals and receive knowledge and guidance from them. The results of our study show that the discretionary behaviors exhibited by IS professionals positively affect users’ perceptions of the levels of usefulness and ease of use of new systems, encouraging them to use the systems as fully as possible. This study extends our understanding of the role that the discretionary behavior of IS professionals plays in enhancing the value that organizations obtain from their new IS investments.

In this research, we perform a meta-analysis to explain how organizations are deploying technologies to enforce organizational sustainability by meeting the goal of eco-effectiveness. Prior studies have studied the influences on the adoption of technologies using the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) model that incorporate some aspects of technological, organizational or environmental factors. We collected prior research to test the factors of the TOE model to ascertain their relative impact and strength. Our meta-analysis found eight additional technological and organizational factors. We found strong support for IT infrastructure, perceived direct benefits, top management support, and competitive pressure. Moderate support for compatibility, technological readiness, perceived indirect benefits, knowledge (human resources), organizational size, attitudes towards innovation, learning culture, pressure from trade partners (industry characteristics) and regulatory support. Lastly, weak support was found for relative advantage, complexity, perceived risks and information learning culture. Only two dimensions, financial resources and environmental uncertainty failed to reach statistical significance.

Successful adoption and use of information systems is an area of continued research in the field of information systems. This prior research has shown that how we adopt and use an information system depends on how we make sense of it. The sense-making activity is carried out through our cognitive structures of knowledge that relate to technology our technological frames. The sense-making activity changes over time, as use and exposure to differing technologies occur. Most research into information systems in organisations has focused on a specific information system; this preoccupation with studying discrete projects at one point in time may be limiting. In an attempt to fill this research gap, we use the socio-cognitive perspective of Orlikowski & Gash to analyse technological frames in one organisation over a longitudinal period to evaluate sensemaking in relation to multiple systems. The interpretive case study looks at the technological frames of senior management, faculty teaching staff, information technology IT mediating staff and IT groups over a 10-year period in a university and finds that there were incongruent frames between senior management and other groups within the organisation with senior management holding a dominant frame. The consequences of these frames were demonstrated when they were linked to the use of the four major information systems in the organisation, showing repeated historical patterns of use that caused inefficiencies due to the incongruent frames of the various groups. The unchanging dominant technological frame contributed to this pattern.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of intellectual capital (IC) disclosures in annual reports (mandatory and voluntary) and draw attention to the specific issues related to the methodology used i.e. content analysis. The focus is to incorporate all forms of IC disclosure – narratives, numbers, and visual images – into the analysis as well as highlight the need to study both quantity (extent) and quality of disclosure.Design/methodology/approachUsing content analysis, this paper analyzes 30 of Malaysia's largest public‐listed companies from the IC disclosure of 2008 annual reports. The results are used to discuss specific methodological issues such as the usage of an IC index, choice of unit of analysis, quantity versus quality, presence/absence versus multiple disclosures, and the usage of narratives, numbers, and visual images.FindingsThis paper proposes that themes are the most appropriate recording and counting unit to analyze IC information combining narratives, numbers, and visual images. The discussion finds, among others, that while quantity and quality are highly related, quality of disclosure provides the most insights into the disclosure behavior adopted by companies.Practical implicationsThis paper provides methodological guidelines to future IC researchers interested in analyzing the quantity and quality of IC disclosure.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, so far there are no studies published that provide a detailed discussion on ways to capture the quantity and quality of IC information disclosed in annual reports using all three forms of disclosure – narratives, numbers, and visual images.

Using an in-depth case study, this paper examines how the governance of a public university responds to the dual challenges of academic research and commercialization. Our findings indicate that the stakeholder model of institutional governance for academic research strongly underpinned by new public management ideologies conflicted with the research commercialization mission dominated by a profit seeking objective. To be governed responsibly, commercialization requires some degree of corporatization, and the corporate governance model seems to offer many advantages to public universities. The study demonstrated that the best way forward for public universities may be to adopt „dual‟ stakeholder and corporate governance models and utilize complementary and collaborative governance strategies to meet the challenges of academic research development and commercialization.

Tourist behaviours can be viewed as performances on a variety of tourism stages. This article examines tourist packing practices as planning and preparation for touristic performances. Grounded theory methods are employed to analyze documentary sources in which tourists describe what and how they pack for air travel. The article presents a substantive theory of packing for travel. This theory is viewed through the lens of Giddens’ grand theory of self-identity. The contents of a travel bag constitute the costumes and props a tourist believes will aid their performance in each tourism setting. Packing for travel is an act in which the tourist prioritises those items they believe will most assist the maintenance, construction and articulation of self-identity in new settings.

Good relationships between information systems (IS) and business employees build shared understanding and cross-domain knowledge, and enhance the level of business-IS alignment in an organization. Most researchers have focused on improving the quality and frequency of communication, and less work has been done on the informal activities IS staff carry out to aid their non-IS colleagues. This limited attention on the behaviors of IS employees restricts our understanding of how positive interaction between IS and non-IS employees can be encouraged and how it affects the effectiveness of an IS department. Drawing on the concept of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), we derive a set of IS-specific OCBs by reviewing the literature and relate them to characteristics of IS departments and IS employees. Our research questions are: a) When are IS professionals more likely to engage in IS-specific OCBs? b) What is the impact of IS-specific OCBs on the effectiveness of the IS department?

This paper aims to deepen our understanding on how sociomateriality practices influence IT workers’ roles and skill set requirements and changes to the organizational routines of IT systems support, when an organization migrates an on-premise IT system to a software as a service (SaaS) model. This conceptual paper is part of an ongoing study investigating organizations that migrated on-premise IT email systems to SaaS business models, such as Google Apps for Education (GAE) and Microsoft Office 365 systems, in New Zealand tertiary institutions. We present initial findings from interpretive case studies. The findings are, firstly, technological artifacts are entangled in sociomaterial practices, which change the way humans respond to the performative aspects of the organizational routines. Human and material agencies are interwoven in ways that reinforce or change existing routines. Secondly, materiality, virtual realm and spirit of the technology provide elementary levels at which human and material agencies entangle. Lastly, the elementary levels at which human and material entangle depends on the capabilities or skills set of an individual.

Discusses the use of information technology to facilitate communication and collaboration. In this action research project a groupware product called Lotus NotesTM was implemented to facilitate communication and collaboration amongst the senior management team. Although there was a real need for change, and the project received strong support from senior management on the basis that it would enable radical changes in coordination within the workgroup, these radical changes did not occur. The authors analyse the reasons for failure, and suggest that the project failed because of institutional forces which inhibited dramatic changes in work habits.

Packing for travel is an intriguing aspect of tourist behavior. Until recently, no research has sought to explain what the modern traveler packs for air journeys or why these items are packed. Perhaps for some observers these questions appear mundane, and the answers appear obvious, yet these issues attract a great volume on commentary on websites, blogs, in travel books, in magazines, and conversations between travelers. From these sources, Hyde and Olesen (2011) developed a grounded theory of packing for air travel. The purpose of this article is to test the grounded theory of packing for air travel using video-ethnographic case study data. The findings are that the grounded theory for air travel is able to explain what possessions are packed and the motives for these items being packed. The emphasis that any individual places on the possessions they pack and the role these possessions play during a journey will differ by traveler. This adds to extant literature on packing for travel.