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Pouloudi, Athanasia (Nancy)

pouloudi@aueb.gr

Stakeholder Analysis for Inter-organisational Information Systems in Healthcare

(1998)

This thesis defines an interpretive stakeholder analysis approach for studying inter-organisational systems and demonstrates its value in the healthcare domain. I argue that the complex and political nature of these systems implies that the issues affecting their development and implementation go well beyond the primarily commercial concerns on which current research in studying inter-organisational systems focuses.

This thesis is based on the assumption that this broader range of issues can be better investigated and understood through a systematic and comprehensive study of their stakeholders. I argue that this can be achieved by adopting an interpretive research epistemology, not least because of some common assumptions shared by stakeholder analysis approaches and interpretive research. The thesis unveils these common assumptions and uses them to define an interpretive approach to the identification and analysis of stakeholder perceptions on studying inter-organisational systems and their context.

Using previous research in the stakeholder literature, this work examines descriptive, instrumental and normative implications of the stakeholder approach in studying inter-organisational systems use in healthcare, a domain where studying inter-organisational systems development is less likely to be driven by commercial concerns.

The descriptive aspect is made explicit with the study of inter-organisational systems used in the drug use management domain, whereas instrumental and normative aspects are investigated in the context of the NHSnet, a controversial system pertaining to the electronic exchange of information in the healthcare domain in the United Kingdom.

The thesis contributes to interpretive information systems research with the systematic study of the stakeholder concept in an inter-organisational context and its grounding within the interpretive epistemology. It emphasises the importance and interrelation between the different aspects of stakeholder theory and demonstrates the value of each aspect in the healthcare domain, thus also contributing to a rich insight in the particular empirical research context.

Supervisor: Edgar Whitley, PhD

Nancy Pouloudi is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Management Science & Technology at Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece.

Nancy Pouloudi's home page.

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