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Data warehouse systems have become a basic technological infrastructure in management decision making. Nevertheless, the overall utility of data warehouses remains unmeasured in most practical cases. As a consequence of this, IT-managers do not possess appropriate means to evaluate warehouse benefits in order to decide about investments in warehousing technology. This paper develops a controlling instrument for data warehouse systems based on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach. On the basis of the technological aspects of data warehouse systems, the BSC perspectives are developed and populated with relevant objectives and measures for datawarehouse success. These perspectives are integrated into a consistent data warehouse scorecard. Finally, this instrument provides a holistic approach to drive the performance of data warehouse systems.
Building on Hofstede's finding that individualism and social hierarchy are incompatible at the societal level, the authors examined the relationship between individualism-collectivism and orientations toward authority at the individual level. In Study 1, authoritarianism was related to three measures of collectivism but unrelated to three measures of individualism in a U.S. sample (N = 382). Study 2 used Triandis's horizontal-vertical individualism-collectivism framework in samples from Bulgaria, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Poland, Canada, and the United States (total N = 1,018). Both at the individual level and the societal level of analysis, authoritarianism was correlated with vertical individualism and vertical collectivism but unrelated to horizontal collectivism. Horizontal individualism was unrelated to authoritarianism except in post-Communist societies whose recent history presumably made salient the incompatibility between state authority and self-determination.
Every modern institution involved in higher education needs a Learning Management System (LMS) to handle learning and teaching processes. It is necessary to offer e.g. electronic lecture materials to the students for download via the internet. In some educational contexts, it is also necessary to offer internet tutorials to be able to give the students more personal support and accompany them through the whole lecture period. Many organisations have introduced commercial LMS and gained the experience that monolithic solutions do not fulfil the dynamic requirements of complex educational institutions and are very cost-intensive. Therefore, many universities face the decision to stick to their commercial LMS or to switch to a potentially more cost-effective and flexible solution, for instance by adopting available Open Source LMS. Since we have made profound experience in developing and operating an Open Source LMS, this contribution enlightens the main characteristics of this alternative. This paper describes a use case dealing with a full product lifecycle (development, deployment, use and evaluation) of an Open Source LMS at the University of Muenster (Germany). It identifies relevant instruments and aspects of system design which software architects in practical application domains should pay attention to.
Model Driven Architecture (MDA): Integration and Model Reuse for Open Source eLearning Platforms
(2005)
Business-driven development favors the construction of process models
at different abstraction levels and by different people. As a consequence, there is a demand for consolidating different versions of process models by merging them. In this paper, we study a basic scenario, derive requirements and present a prototype for detecting and resolving changes between process models.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate which mode of birth first-time mothers in Germany and in the USA prefer and how this desire is related to maternal well-being and sense of coherence. The paper describes emotional well-being postpartum in relationship to mode of birth. For data collection a prospective cohort study was conducted in both countries. A self-administered questionnaire including validated instruments (WHO-5 Well-Being Index, Sense of Coherence Scale and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) was used. Results showed that only a few of the pregnant women in Germany and the USA preferred to deliver by caesarean section. There was a relationship between women's well-being, women's sense of coherence and the preferred mode of birth. The majority of women who wanted a caesarean section delivered in this way. No relationship was found between women's well-being and the type of birth experienced. Well-being in both samples generally decreased after giving birth, but there was a difference between German and American first-time mothers on the postpartum well-being and depression scores. German mothers had a higher postnatal quality of life and lower postnatal depression scores. To give families the opportunity for a healthy start, midwives and obstetricians should try to enhance women's well-being and they should give some thought to health professionals' decision-making processes. Expanded postpartum care might have an impact on women's depression scores..
When speaking about eBusiness as applied to the healthcare market two questions arise immediately. Firstly, what is eBusiness? Secondly, why is eBusiness in healthcare different from eBusiness in other sectors?
Within the arena of eBusiness in healthcare, the focus is on purchasing and selling online as the most advanced application. In this book, the Authors consider both the perspective of the healthcare providers and that of the suppliers, showing the interdependencies between the two and developing concepts for a new synergistic cooperation.
eBusiness in Healthcare raises awareness of and interest in electronically mediated business processes in healthcare to a large audience including healthcare informaticians, medical business managers, clinicians, pharmacists and scientists. By taking an international approach to the topic the authors demonstrate the many similarities of eBusiness problems and their solutions among different countries which permits analysis of the differences that are often defined by the national healthcare systems and their rules. Case studies from healthcare institutions and from suppliers in the US, the UK and Germany will illustrate the achievements, barriers and future plans, thus enabling newcomers to learn from previous experience.
Clinicians will gain significant insight by this book which demonstrates the interconnection between patient care processes and management issues at the level of medical supplies. The book also makes a plea for a multidisciplinary effort, to enable the right product to be procured for the right patient. As a rather new discipline, eBusiness in healthcare needs further scientific backing. Against this background, this book will not only provide answers but will also raise questions for future research. Managing change and innovation and establishing the critical mass for eBusiness in healthcare is a major undertaking. The aim of this book is to support this process.
Hedonism
(2009)
Continuity of care is a concept that is defined as the uninterrupted and coordinated care provided to a patient and that includes an informational dimension which describes the information exchange between the parties involved. In nursing, the nursing summary is the main instrument to ensure informational continuity of care. The aim of this paper is to present an HL7 Clinical Document Architecture based document standard for the eNursing Summary and to discuss the need for harmonizing these results at international level. The eNursing Summary proposed in this paper was developed on the basis of several internationally accepted concepts, primarily the nursing process, the ISO 18104 Reference Terminology Model for Nursing and various data sets. The standardisation process embraced several phases of involving nursing experts for validating its structure and content. It was finally evaluated by a network of 100 healthcare organizations. We argue that the eNursing Summary is a good starting point for standardising nursing discharge and transfer documents on a global level. However, further work is needed to bring together the different national and international strands in standardisation.
Employee cooperation is fundamental for accomplishing successful organizational change processes. Therefore, it is important to understand how employees' cooperation can be supported in the context of organizational change. Based on the group engagement model, we hypothesized how procedural justice affects organizational identification which in turn should have an affect on employees' cooperation (commitment to change, values-congruence fit, and change-supporting behavior) in the context of organizational change. To test the fit of the proposed model, structural equation models were calculated using both cross-sectional (N = 315) and longitudinal (N = 110) data of academic staff at a German university. Results indicated adequate data fit to our proposed model and revealed that organizational identification mediated the positive effects of procedural justice on affective commitment to change and values-congruence fit. The assumed mediating effect of organizational identification on the positive relationship between procedural justice and change-supporting behavior could only be supported using cross-sectional data.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how transformational leadership relates to followers' innovation implementation behavior, the psychological mechanisms of this relationship, and the role of individual perceptions of climate for initiative.
Design/methodology/approach
Perceptual data were collected from 198 employees in lower and middle management positions of a multinational automotive corporation. Relationships were tested using hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
Results demonstrate that transformational leadership was strongly related to followers' innovation implementation behavior and that the nature of this relationship was moderated by followers' levels of perceived climate for initiative. Additionally, commitment to change fully mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' innovation implementation behavior.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is based on a cross‐sectional design. A causal interpretation requires studies with experimental or longitudinal designs.
Practical implications
Companies should invest in transformational leadership training and in the selection of supervisors with this leadership style before initiating the implementation of innovations. Enhancing contextual factors, such as a perceived climate for initiative, should be promoted by integrating them into organizations' reward systems.
Originality/value
The paper is one of the first to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' innovation implementation behavior. It specifies the organizational contexts under which transformational leadership is most likely related to innovation implementation behavior, and those in which such a relationship is unlikely to occur.
Background: IT adoption is a process that is influenced by different external and internal factors. This study aimed
1. to identify similarities and differences in the prevalence of medical and nursing IT systems in Austrian and German hospitals, and
2. to match these findings with characteristics of the two countries, in particular their healthcare system, and with features of the hospitals.
Methods: In 2007, all acute care hospitals in both countries received questionnaires with identical questions. 12.4% in Germany and 34.6% in Austria responded.
Results: The surveys revealed a consistent higher usage of nearly all clinical IT systems, especially nursing systems, but also PACS and electronic archiving systems, in Austrian than in German hospitals. These findings correspond with a significantly wider use of standardised nursing terminologies and a higher number of PC workstations on the wards (average 2.1 PCs in Germany, 3.2 PCs in Austria). Despite these differences, Austrian and German hospitals both reported a similar IT budget of 2.6% in Austria and 2.0% in Germany (median).
Conclusions: Despite the many similarities of the Austrian and German healthcare system there are distinct differences which may have led to a wider use of IT systems in Austrian hospitals. In nursing, the specific legal requirement to document nursing diagnoses in Austria may have stimulated the use of standardised terminologies for nursing diagnoses and the implementation of electronic nursing documentation systems. Other factors which correspond with the wider use of clinical IT systems in Austria are: good infrastructure of medical-technical devices, rigorous organisational changes which had led to leaner processes and to a lower length of stay, and finally a more IT friendly climate. As country size is the most pronounced difference between Germany and Austria it could be that smaller countries, such as Austria, are more ready to translate innovation into practice.
The last two decades have been characterized by a fundamental change in the approaches, tools and instruments in the quality management at Higher Education Institutions. Comparison of two Higher Education Institutions in the Slovak Republic and Germany highlights similarities and trends in quality assurance. Both case studies show how multifaceted the quality management is, and the needs to be approached if a meaningful progress is to be made. Complexity has to be explicitly recognized and built into the approach chosen. Higher Education Institutions have to develop internal quality assurance processes. Quality culture is key for addressing the challenges.
Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in parents of children suffering from renal disease is often diminished by the illness burden experienced in daily life and by unfavorable ways of coping. Our aim was to examine the relationship between psychosocial strains perceived by parents, their ways of coping, and HRQOL. In an anonymous cross-sectional study, parents completed a questionnaire concerning psychosocial strains, coping strategies, and HRQOL, as well as sociodemographic and illness parameters. Study participants were recruited in two outpatient dialysis centers. Participating in the study were 195 parents (105 mothers, 90 fathers; age 43 ± 8 years; representing 108 families) of children suffering from renal disease (age 12 ± 5 years). Parents of children with chronic renal failure reported moderate HRQOL with parents of children undergoing dialysis experiencing more limitations in quality of life than parents of children living with a kidney graft and parents of children undergoing conservative treatment. Mothers experienced lower HRQOL and higher psychosocial strains than fathers. HRQOL was predicted by the coping strategies “focusing on child” (β = –0.25), “improving marital relationship” (β = 0.24), “seeking social support” (β = –0.22) and “self-acceptation and growth” (β =0 .19) as well as parents′ perceived limitation by illness in daily life (β = –0.15; explained variance 57%). In the comprehensive care for families with a child suffering from a renal disease, screening for psychosocial strains and ways of coping, along with applying interventions to strengthen adaptive coping strategies, may be a preventative means of improving parents′ quality of life.
To ensure the quality of long-term care services has been one of the key elements of German long-term care insurance since its implementation in 1995. A joint agreement between insurers and service providers served as the baseline for quality assurance. Monitoring and control of quality in institutional and home based long-term care was performed by the insurers’ Medical Board. As a result of problems in some long-term care facilities reported in the media the Long-term Care System Reform Act of 2008 contained several provisions to ensure and improve the quality of services. The obligatory use of expert standards for the performance of particular nursing interventions and the establishment of a system of public reporting were the first measures implemented. The development of quality indicators has also been initiated. These routes to quality, their anticipated effects and remaining challenges will be addressed in this article.
The paper presents and analyses the structure and consequences of limits to growth for the global economy. Apart from the famous report for the Club of Rome, a wide range of related literature, which all caution against the idea of unrestricted growth, is also covered. In presenting side tracks in economics, major differences towards standard economic reasoning are highlighted; these are particularly centred on the concepts of technology, sustainability, and resources. One of the central conclusions is that technological progress alone cannot be the knight in shining armour to save the day amid increasing stress on the sides of sources and sinks of the global system. Further, oil production, consumption, and reserve patterns are discussed, emphasising that a continuous underestimation of the challenges ahead would be distressing. Finally, the development of non-advanced countries is hindered, as the diminishing availability of oil reserves could prove as a significant constraint.