North African Information Networks

The diffusion of health information technology (IT) is still one of the most important issues in this sector. The main reason behind this issue is that health IT is employed in an institutional environment characterized by high technical complexity, and this makes the processes of change towards the adoption and diffusion of health IT are difficult, especially with resisting change by some staff are working in health institutions. The current study came to identify the user’s characteristics that impact the diffusion of IT. The study has been designed based on the literature of information systems and includes four constructs: personal innovativeness, self-efficacy, the user's attitude towards technology, and trust in information technology. Concerning the sample, it included the health staff working in six private hospitals in the city of Dohuk, and a questionnaire was built based on the previous studies as a tool to collect data, and the number of study sample individuals was (233). The main result of the study is that there is a significant effect of user characteristics (at the level of each characteristic and at the macro level) on the diffusion of health IT. This result is prove that the process of diffusion IT applications depends mainly on the characteristics obtained by users that support the diffusion process. The study recommends to pay more attention to the user’s characteristics, such as personal Innovations, enhancing his self-efficacy, contributing to building his positive attitude towards technology and enhancing the trust in IT, due to its role in diffusing the health IT.

Abstract. Information technology (IT) innovation research examines the organizational and technological factors that determine IT adoption and diffusion, including firm size and scope, technological competency and expected benefits. We extend the literature by focusing on information requirements as a driver of IT innovation adoption and diffusion. Our framework of IT innovation diffusion incorporates three industry‐level sources of information requirements: process complexity, clock speed and supply chain complexity. We apply the framework to US manufacturing industries using aggregate data of internet‐based innovations and qualitative analysis of two industries: wood products and beverage manufacturing. Results show systematic patterns supporting the basic thesis of the information processing paradigm: higher IT innovation diffusion in industries with higher information processing requirements; the salience of downstream industry structure in the adoption of interorganizational systems; and the role of the location of information intensity in the supply chain in determining IT adoption and diffusion. Our study provides a new explanation for why certain industries were early and deep adopters of internet‐based innovations while others were not: variation in information processing requirements.

This article examines the antecedents and performance consequences of capabilities developed from the use of information technology (IT) in a sample of 186 Italian large enterprises. Attention is given to the influence of industry and firm characteristics on the creation of capabilities and on the returns from IT investments. Our work makes three principal contributions. First, the IT diffusion patterns reveal that these technologies have a dual nature. Some capabilities derived from IT use (i.e., administrative capabilities) diffuse evenly across industries because the underlying technologies easily adapt to industry- and firm-specific conditions. In contrast, the use of IT in supporting other capabilities (such as those related to product development) is less developed and more concentrated in the high-tech and information service sectors. Second, using a resource-based perspective, this articles shows the positive effects that firm-specific preconditions have on the accumulation of IT resources and capabilities that exhibit a rare diffusion at the industry level. Third, given industry-level differences in competitive environments, we show how the value appropriation of capabilities that firms have developed using IT depends on industry type, with hi-tech and information services industries exhibiting lower profit returns.

New product diffusion relies heavily on interpersonal relationships, yet the adoption chasm between the early adopters and the early majority poses a significant challenge. The pervasiveness of peer influence in social networks presents unique opportunities for businesses to effectively bridge this chasm between user groups. This study, grounded in social–psychological theory, examines the micro‐processes of early adopters' peer influence on the early majority within social networks. Utilizing the stimulus–organism–response model, we propose that early adopter peer influence can enhance early majority adoption intention, thereby crossing the chasm of new product diffusion. Empirical findings reveal that early adopters' peer influence, directly and indirectly, affects the early majority's adoption decisions. When indirect effects are at play, the early majority emphasizes the emotional and social values embedded within the new product, driven by the early adopters' peer influence. These insights contribute to understanding how interactions between user types can help bridge the adoption chasm. The study augments, refines, and expands upon existing research on new product diffusion chasms and offers valuable practical guidance for businesses seeking to harness peer influence more effectively to overcome this barrier.

ABSTRACTInformation schools (iSchools) have grown along with heightened understanding of the rapid changes taking place in the information society and in the humanities. This growth has led to the characteristics of multidisciplinarity and the need for ongoing discussion and collaboration in information field (i-Field) research in terms of human behaviors and information technology. To promote collaboration in the context of research and education, it is necessary to understand the current activities of iSchools in relation to their collaboration patterns. This study analyzed the research patterns among iSchools at the macro and micro levels, and combined the analysis resultsFor the analysis,, 41 iSchools were identified from the iSchool directory. Co-authorship and an institution-profiling network were extracted from conference papers and posters presented at the iConference 2008-2013 to mine scholarly communication patterns. Social networks (friendship networks) among them were also extracted from Twitter by collecting their common followees to identify their interest in current public issues. The network analysis was performed at the micro and macro levels.In the micro-level analysis, the structures of social networking and scholarly communication among 41 iSchools were constructed and compared statistically by executing quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) correlation. The QAP correlation analysis determines whether a relationship exists between two particular nodes in two networks at the same time. At the macro level, comparison between the top interest in social networking and that of scholarly communication was performed by revealing top co-word networks. Additionally, co-authorship patterns and institution profiling patterns among 196 institutions, including the 41 iSchools identified in scholarly communication, were compared statistically to identify similarities and differences in communication patterns of iSchools compared to non-iSchools.The analysis provided evidence of the current prominent collaborating bodies and their neighbors as proactive actors accelerating scholarly communication and social networking. The social networking pattern and institution-profiling pattern were significantly related at the micro level, and the co-authorship pattern was significantly related to the institution-profiling pattern at macro-level. Additionally, iSchools that actively elaborate social networking and scholarly communication at the micro or macro levels were identified and compared to determine whether iSchools that could bridge other iSchools and non-iSchools in both social networking and research. The significant interest in social networking revealed in this study was related to IT trends and higher education while the research interest in the iField was related to linking information science to society, technology, and culture.Keywords: Social network analysis, Bibliometrics, Twitter, Social networking, iSchool, iConference1. INTRODUCTIONiSchools are recognized as an emerging name for information schools whose approach applies information science and technology to culture, education, and business (iSchools). Because membership and research activities of iSchools have expanded rapidly since 2003, it is important to define the major activities and research these schools have pursued to understand where they stand in the fields of research and education. Recent studies have examined the overall research activity and education programs of iSchools (Chen 2008; Subramaniam & Jaeger 2011; Wiggins & Sawyer 2012; Wu, He, Jiang, Dong & Vo, 2012) and these studies could be regarded as a reflection of the need for further research.The purpose of this study was to enhance the understanding of iSchools and their research activities by identifying their major interests in current issues and research. The researcher assumed that iSchools' social networking patterns could represent their interests in current issues, and publications could show their research interests and activities. …

This study investigated the effects of social media and its influence on the academic performance of the students in the National Open University (NOUN), Benin Study Center using a self-developed structured questionnaire called “Social Media and Academic Performance of Students Questionnaire (SMAAPOS)” with 395 student respondents. Data obtained shows that 597 (46%) of the participants’ responded Strongly Agree that students addictiveness to social network has a significant influence on their academic performance, while 312 (24%) Agree, 262 (20%) Disagree, and 125 (10%) Strongly Disagree, and that there is a significant influence on student’s usages of social media network by age.Keywords: Social Network Sites, Information and Communication Technology, Academy performance

Complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies: An empirical analysis

From the Book: It is more true than ever that information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) are prerequisites for business success. Business organizations are reported to be investing a considerable proportion of their free capital in IS/IT. However, it is also reported that as much as 50 per cent of these undertakings lead to IS/IT solutions judged as outright failures or deemed highly unsatisfactory. As the impressive amount of published research on IS/IT innovation and diffusion has already shown, the development and use of IS/IT requires continuous innovation and diffusion processes among an organization's line employees, internal IT experts, and external support mechanisms (e.g, research centers, consultants, software houses, and vendors). Because of the alarmingly high IS/IT investment failure rate, however, one can easily assume that this published research on IS/IT innovation and diffusion is thus far fragmented, incomplete, and has not provided clear direction to effectively understanding technology innovation and diffusion issues. Of course, practitioners may also not be applying the lessons already learned from existing research, but that is another matter. Part of the reason for this seeming disconnect between research and practice is simply that IS/IT is continuing to develop at such a rapid pace. More and more information and complex relationships are being captured, stored, processed, and transmitted to ever larger numbers of knowledge workers within and between organizations. For many industry segments, the very nature and definition of their business is undergoing continual and radical change. The way work is done, decisions are made, products are tailored, production is automated, material is distributed, and customers are satisfied is all changing on a global stage. IT stands squarely in the middle of this transformation and looks to a near future where business trends will require the use of information in ways not yet even imagined. Readers of this book should not therefore expect to find an integrated and comprehensive approach to IT innovation and diffusion issues. The chapters in this book represent the diverse and unique views of authors who approach the technology innovation and diffusion process from a wide variety of perspectives. Each, in their respective chapter, offers a piece of the whole picture. Taken together, these chapters present the careful and insightful exploration of many variables affecting the innovation and diffusion process. As such, this book, by bringing together these chapters, makes a valuable contribution to the IT innovation and diffusion literature. The continuing challenge in this field of inquiry is to persist in exploring developing trends and to assist researchers and practitioners in better grasping future challenges. The contributions in this book help address that challenge. The book concentrates on four broad innovation and diffusion areas. First, single aspects that may influence innovation and diffusion outcome are examined. These aspects are human oriented (e.g., power distribution) or technology related (e.g., a graphical simulator.) Second, diffusion theory as applied to the introduction and spreading of software application packages that are commonly found in organizations is scrutinized. Third, positive and negative aspects related to the use of formally organized diffusion facilitation mechanisms are explored. Fourth, integrated views and models describing innovation and diffusion processes and future potential are forwarded.

People’s opinion has always driven human choices and behaviors, even before the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies. Thanks to the World Wide Web and the widespread of On-Line collaborative tools such as blogs, focus groups, review web sitesorums, social networks, millions of messages appear on the web, which is becoming a rich source of opinioned data. Sentiment analysis refers to the use of natural language processing, text analysis and computational linguistics to identify and extract subjective information in documents, comments and posts. The aim of this work is to show how the adoption of a probabilistic approach based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) as Sentiment Grabber can be an effective Sentiment Analyzer. Through this approach, for a set of documents belonging to a same knowledge domain, a graph, the Mixed Graph of Terms, can be automatically extracted. This graph, which contains a set of Mixed Graph of Terms, can be transformed in a Sentiment Oriented Terminological Ontology thanks to a methodology that involves the introduction of annotated lexicon as Wordnet. The chapter shows how the obtained ontology can be discriminative for sentiment classification. The proposed method has been tested in different contexts: standard datasets and comments extracted from social networks. The experimental evaluation shows how the proposed approach is effective and the results are quite satisfactory.

  This study aims to inform the decision on adoption of cloud computing by a prospective cloud services consumer enterprise, including possible significant benefits of its adoption, in order to ensure informed and accountable information technology (IT) related decision-making. A literature review was performed to obtain information on cloud computing. Additionally, an IT governance control framework was used to systematically identify and categorise significant benefits of the adoption of cloud computing by an enterprise (including governmental organisations and business). The benefits of cloud computing adoption that was discovered include scale benefits and the transformation of a capital expense to a scalable operational expense.   Key words: Cloud computing, information technology (IT), control objectives for information and related technology (COBIT), IT governance, outsourcing.

Intraorganizational information and communication technology diffusion: Implications for industrial sellers and buyers

There is widespread enthusiasm about generative artificial intelligence (AI), but no systematic evidence on its implementation across health care organizations. To describe adoption of generative AI integrated with the electronic health record (EHR) by nonfederal acute care hospitals, how adoption relates to experience using and evaluating predictive AI, and hospital characteristics. This survey study of nonfederal acute care US hospitals used the 2024 American Hospital Association (AHA) Information Technology (IT) Supplement survey. The survey was completed by individuals most knowledgeable about health IT at the participating hospitals. Experience with predictive AI, source of predictive AI, local evaluation practices (evaluation for accuracy and bias as well as postdeployment evaluation), and EHR developer were collected from the 2024 AHA IT Supplement. Hospital characteristics, including critical access hospital status, multihospital system membership, and teaching status, were collected from the 2024 AHA Annual Survey. Hospital operating margins, uncompensated care burden, and percentage of discharges from Medicaid were collected from the 2022 Medicare Cost Report. Whether the hospital was an early adopter of generative AI integrated with their EHR (currently used generative AI), fast follower (planned to use in the next year), or delayed adopter (planned to use in 5 years, no plans, or do not know). A total of 2174 hospitals (1003 [weighted percentage, 50.4%] small; 1382 [weighted percentage, 60.8%] urban core-based; 1668 [weighted percentage, 68.8%] part of a multihospital system) responded to questions about their use of AI (51.5% response rate). Overall, 762 hospitals (weighted percentage, 31.5%) were early adopters of generative AI in 2024, 540 (weighted percentage, 24.7%) were fast followers, and 872 (weighted percentage, 43.7%) were delayed adopters. In unadjusted analyses, independent hospitals and critical access hospitals were less likely to be either early adopters or fast followers than delayed adopters. In adjusted analyses, hospitals that used predictive AI were more likely to be early adopters or fast followers than delayed adopters (difference, 26.2 [95% CI, 16.8-35.6] percentage points). Users of Epic were more likely to be early adopters and fast followers than users of other EHRs (eg, likelihood of being an early adopter or fast follower, Epic vs Oracle users: 21.9 [95% CI, 16.3-27.4] percentage points). Hospitals that reported conducting all local evaluation practices (accuracy, bias, postdeployment) were slower to adopt than hospitals that reported only 1 evaluation practice (all local evaluation processes: 12.1 [95% CI, 4.5-19.6] percentage points less likely to be early adopters than fast followers). In this survey study of US hospitals, more than half of US hospitals reported that they would likely implement generative AI by the end of 2025. Results indicate the value of providing support to ensure hospitals can adopt beneficial generative AI and the need for developing and disseminating best practices for generative AI evaluation across organizations.

Over the past two decades, most industrialized economies have become more information technology (IT) intensive as spending on IT-related goods increased dramatically. All sectors of the economy are experiencing significant changes in the way goods and services are produced and delivered as a result of the increased diffusion and use of information technologies. Two inter-related forces have contributed to these developments. First, communications and information processing costs have fallen dramatically, and this has spurred and deepened globalization. Secondly, globalization, in turn, has advanced technological change by intensifying competition and expediting the diffusion of technology through international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). In a parallel development, productivity growth in OECD economies has slowed significantly since the early 1970s. The decline has been especially noticeable in the service sector which consumes over 80 per cent of IT goods. This has raised questions related to the implications of IT investments.' Until recently, there has been little empirical evidence that IT capital has contributed to increases in output and productivity growth.2 In this regard, two recent studies carried out on U.S. data deserve specific mention. Berndt and Morrison (1995) examined the impact of investments in high-tech office and information technology capital on productivity growth across two-digit manufacturing industries from 1968 through 1986. They found that increases in high-tech investments are negatively correlated to multi-factor productivity growth. However, they did find some evidence that industries with a higher proportion of high-tech capital had higher measures of economic performance.3 In contrast, Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1995) argued that IT has become a productive investment for many firms. Using data from a large number of firms over the 1988-92 period, they found that while 'firm effects' may account for as much as half of the productivity benefits imputed to IT in earlier studies, the elasticity of IT remains positive and statistically significant.

There is a deficiency of material on information technology (IT) based on the experiences of our neighbouring European countries. France is discussed, focusing, in particular, on the perception, implementation and diffusion of IT in the workplace. Certain factors are identified which are crucial in determining the mode of implementation, and the success or failure of technological change in the workplace, whether measured in behavioural or economic terms.

Information technology (IT) is a major innovation in the operations of the Philippine national government. It plays an increasingly pivotal role in shaping and influencing the delivery of government services. Hence, effective IT adoption and diffusion in public sector organisations has become an important concern. An understanding of the factors affecting IT adoption could lead to the development of better strategies for introducing IT and maximising its use. This study surveyed national government agencies in the Philippines to determine the factors that facilitate IT adoption and implementation. Built on innovation diffusion and IT implementation studies, a model of organisational-level adoption was developed and tested. The model identified seven variables that could potentially influence IT adoption in the government. Six of these research variables were operationalised using appropriate quantitative measures and multi-item indicators adapted from instruments that have been validated in previous empirical studies. The operational measure for the last variable - information intensity - was specifically developed for this study. The multi-item measures were evaluated and refined using item analysis and factor analysis. Multiple regression analyses were then conducted, to test the research propositions. The results suggest that agencies most receptive to information technology are larger, more open, more information-intensive, and are headed by executives with positive attitudes towards IT.