Tesi sul tema "Information technology (IT) systems"

Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of many economies in the world today. This is because they are creating new jobs and contributing positively to their respective economies in which Sweden is not an exception and par-ticularly the municipality of Jonkoping. SMEs invest in IT to gain access to integration of transactions oriented data and business processes.

This thesis, motivational factors for growth in SMEs – (IT perspective) give an overview of how SMEs grow as a result of the introduction and implementation of IT. Information Technology (IT) is seen to be a motivational factor for the growth of SMEs. This is because it acts like an enabler to their businesses and the current business environment.

To answer the research question, I conducted an empirical study of some companies in Jonkoping that are using IT as a motivational factor for growth. Interviews were con-ducted through the use of a structured questionnaire and to a lesser extent, unstructured questionnaire.

Results from studies portrayed that, these companies introduced and implemented IT as a motivational factor for similar reasons though with different objectives.

Organisations depend on IT for successful completion of many organisational activities. A distinction can be made between organisations with an IT-dependency of type-1, where IT-artefacts perform earlier manual routines, and organisations with an IT-dependency of type-2, where organisations utilise already digital data to enable new or radically improved organisational processes. Recognition of IT-dependency indicates that the way IT-artefacts are related to organisations is important. Moreover, the ways in which such relations are subject to change have so far seldom been subject to research. Thus, the research question asked in this thesis is: How to sustain and further develop the ways IT-artefacts and activities become and continue as related in order to effectively support changed or new organisational activities?

Within informatics we have been preoccupied with studying design of IT-artefacts. I found a design perspective inadequate to grasp the complexity of how IT-artefacts become related to organisational activities. Thus, as a secondary research question I ask: How can IT-artefacts and organisational activities they are intended to support be perceived and understood as fundamentally related? The research questions have methodological implications. Since I could not find a theory giving the answer to my complementary research question, I made it my business to produce one. Methodologically speaking this thesis to a great extent concerns theory construction. In answering the secondary research question I suggests an object of study comprising IT-artefacts and organisational agents co-producing organisational actions; informaction systems. An embryonic theory is outlined, based on Weick’s account of organising, describing mechanisms according to which ITartefacts and organisations become related.

Assuming the embryonic theory of informaction systems to be valid some initial conclusions concerning my original research question can be deduced. (1) seeing an IT-artefact and organisational agent as an action-producing unit means that no one has unilateral control over the co-produced organisational actions. (2) informaction systems become established rather than implemented. (3) sustaining relations is not a design problem, instead it is usually connected to care, so my secondary research question needs to be characterised by a shift from a design mood to a care mood. (4) guidance of an activity in which there is no unilateral control and that has a lot to do with care is characterised by a shift from management to stewardship. (5) the idea that implementation of IT-artefacts dictates organisational behaviour has to be abandoned. Instead it is paramount importance to be sensitive to how IT-artefacts actually become made sense of and hence used and utilised. This can be characterised as a shift in focus from telling to listening. These conclusions are subsumed in an approach to my original research question I have named informaction systems stewardship.

Scientists widely accept that modern agriculture is unsustainable, but the best methods for addressing unsustainability are still contested (Constance, Konefal, and Hatanaka 2018). Grassroots sustainable agriculture communities have long participated in the exploration of solutions for agriculture unsustainability, and their momentum continues to grow in the technical age. Practitioners of grassroots sustainable agriculture use many information systems that were not originally built to support the design of agricultural systems. Based on ethnographic research with two grassroots sustainable agriculture communities, I show that participants’ personal and community values frequently clashed with those embedded in information systems, including ones used to look for and manage plant information. Furthermore, I demonstrate a range of information challenges that participants faced in the absence of tools designed to support their specific work. I argue that practitioners of grassroots sustainable agriculture need information systems tailored to their goals and values in order to productively address barriers to designing and building agroecosystems for their communities.

This dissertation provides an example of how to involve communities in the development of information technology artifacts and strengthen efforts to support sustainability via technological interventions. First, I engaged in two grassroots sustainable agriculture communities as a participant, experiencing their practices, values, and information challenges first hand. Then, I worked with the communities to create a plant database web application (SAGE Plant Database) that supports agroecosystem design in local contexts. Members of the communities participated in the design, development, and data population stages so that the SAGE Plant Database supports their design context and upholds their technological and holistic sustainability values. At the foundation of the database is a plant ontology grounded in the participants’ practice of designing agroecosystems. My comparative analysis of the design of the SAGE Plant Database to other databases demonstrates its relevance due to its emphasis on agroecological relationships among plants and between plants and the environment, the inclusion of ethnobotanical data, and the embedded community values. By engaging in this research, I seek to make progress towards transforming the technology-supported food system into one that furthers food security, food sovereignty, and holistic sustainability.

In this report the two-tone PLL circuit intended for on-chip test of RF blocks is presented. The primary application is the third order intermodulation test (TOI), vital for RF front-ends. If the spectral analysis can also be completed by DSP available on the chip or on board, it provides a built in self-test (BiST) which can replace costly test instrumentation (ATE). The advantage of the designed two-tone PLL is that it practically prevents the locking effect while keeping the two oscillation frequencies close. Also by careful design the possible intermodulation distortion of the two-tone stimulus can be avoided.

The two-tone PLL has been designed and verified at the system level using Verilog-A models in Cadence ^TM. Besides, two building blocks of the PLL were implemented at the circuit level in 90nm CMOS technology. The obtained results are promising in terms of a practical two-tone BiST implementation.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been considered a tool that can be used to achieve development goals in developing countries. In the same time, the majority of people living in developing countries, and especially those in rural areas lack access to ICT. Even if there have been many attempts to introduce ICT, they have in general not been long-lasting.

A framework for studying factors that influence use of ICT is desirable. We see it necessary to bring a sustainability aspect into the picture of ICT. In this work the requirement of ‘sustainable ICT use’ stresses that ICT is long-lasting and that ICT meets the needs of the user. Thus, the aim of this work is to develop a tool for conceptualisation that can support the understanding of the conditions for sustainable, and therefore successful, ICT projects in developing countries.

Our theoretical starting point is taken in the Information System (IS) theories. The theoretical base is then broadened to include theories on international development, theories on sustainable development, and theories on diffusion of innovations and transfer of technology. The theoretical foundation, together with four empirical studies, is used to answer the two research questions in this thesis. The first question is: Which are the critical factors influencing sustainable ICT use in developing countries? By using ‘critical factors’ we emphasise a focus on factors which are crucial (even if possibly not sufficient) for bringing about sustainable ICT use. This question is followed by a second question: How would a framework be structured to properly include these factors in order to support analyses of sustainable ICT use?

The framework has evolved through the identification of factors from four empirical studies. Forty-one factors were identified and sorted into fifteen subcategories of five major capital assets. The main contribution of our study is that of a generic framework, which can be used as a guideline for planning, implementation, and evaluation of ICT projects in a rural developing country context achieving sustainable ICT. As argued in this thesis technology is not the key resource; it is the combination and system of different resources distributed along a time and space dimension that is the key. With our framework we have demonstrated that the ICT artefact is not the sustainability tool, it is the combination of different resources that makes it sustainable and competitive.

Healthcare organizations now consider increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved patient care and quality of services, and safety when they are planning to implement new information and communication technology (ICT) based applications. However, in spite of enormous investment in health information systems (HIS), no convincing evidence of the overall benefits of HISs yet exists. The publishing of studies that capture the effects of the implementation and use of ICT-based applications in healthcare may contribute to the emergence of an evidence-based health informatics which can be used as a platform for decisions made by policy makers, executives, and clinicians. Health informatics needs further studies identifying the factors affecting successful HIS implementation and capturing the effects of HIS implementation. The purpose of the work presented in this thesis is to increase the available knowledge about the impact of the implementation and use of HISs in healthcare organizations. All the studies included in this thesis used qualitative research methods. A case study design and literature review were performed to collect data.

This thesis’s results highlight an increasing need to share knowledge, find methods to evaluate the impact of investments, and formulate indicators for success. It makes suggestions for developing or extending evaluation methods that can be applied to this area with a multi-actor perspective in order to understand the effects, consequences, and prerequisites that have to be achieved for the successful implementation and use of IT in healthcare. The results also propose that HIS, particularly integrated computer-based patient records (ICPR), be introduced to fulfill a high number of organizational, individualbased, and socio-technical goals at different levels. It is therefore necessary to link the goals that HIS systems are to fulfill in relation to short-term, middle-term, and long-term strategic goals. Another suggestion is that implementers and vendors should direct more attention to what has been published in the area to avoid future failures.

This thesis’s findings outline an updated structure for implementation planning. When implementing HISs in hospital and primary-care environments, this thesis suggests that such strategic actions as management involvement and resource allocation, such tactical action as integrating HIS with healthcare workflow, and such operational actions as user involvement, establishing compatibility between software and hardware, and education and training should be taken into consideration.