Even though the development of business intelligence is moving forward rapidly, a substantial number of organizations are yet to implement business intelligence. Therefore, this thesis aims at investigating what internal organizational obstacles that could be hindering the implementation of business intelligence and how these obstacles could be overcome. In order to answer this, the Technological Acceptance Model combined with the notion IT identity, is used as the theoretical framework. This thesis is of an interpretivist nature and data was collected through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with six experts within the field of business intelligence, consisting of consultants and business intelligence managers. The identified obstacles could be connected to employees’ perceived usefulness being too low in relation to the perceived non-pecuniary cost. The proposed solutions aims at raising the perceived usefulness and lower the non-pecuniary cost through different methods presented in this thesis.

The Swedish consumers are concerned of their online privacy, while companies increasingly gather personal information with business intelligence (BI) technologies in order to customize online banner ads, among the favoured marketing techniques. Meanwhile, marketers treasure the opportunity to target individuals. The purpose of this research is to generate insights of Swedes’ experiences of intrusion of their privacy online, and their behavioural response to personalised banner advertisements. The research will also observe if there are differences depending on the consumers’ ages. Mediating factors will be regarded how they influence the online users perceived intrusiveness and usefulness of personalised ads. The study is exploratory and aims to provide extensive awareness and beliefs around a complex phenomena. It will have a qualitative approach where data collection is conducted through semi-structured, in-depth, interviews with Swedish consumers from two age groups, complemented by three expert interviews. The results show that, in comparison, elderly consumers have less knowledge of personalised advertising, as well as BI-technology, leading to higher privacy concern and perceived intrusiveness when exposed to these ads. Members of the generation Y comprehend the phenomena to a greater extent, and more easily see the usefulness presented, but are overall ambiguous. Attitudes are likely to be formed based on the experienced intrusiveness contra usefulness, but are not clearly influencing trust, loyalty of future purchasing behaviours. Generally, marketers and consumers’ views show incongruence, as marketers remain very positive to using personal information to customize ads, while consumers do not always perceive it similarly. A balance can be difficult to achieve, but a unanimous belief demand high accuracy of content and placement of the personalised ads to be perceived as useful.

Social software technology has gained considerable popularity over the last decade and has had a great impact on hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Businesses have also expressed their interest in leveraging its use in business contexts. As a result, software vendors and business consumers have invested billions of dollars to use social software to improve business and employee productivity. The purpose of this study was to provide insights to business leaders and decision makers as they shaped their enterprise social software (ESS) delivery plans. A vast body of information exists on the benefits of ESS and its technical implementation, but little empirical research is available on employees' perceptions of ESS expectancy factors (i.e. usefulness and ease of use). This study focused on IT managers' perceptions of ESS expectancy factors to understand their behavioral intent to adopt ESS technology. Additional research was performed to uncover relationships and differences between IT Managers' adoption intentions and employee age, gender, and generational groups. Survey results were analyzed using a correlation research design and demonstrated significant relationships were found between IT managers' expectancy factors and their behavioral intent to adopt ESS technology. Differences were also demonstrated between IT managers' age, gender, and generational cohort groups. The results of this research should help business leaders gain insights into technology adoption factors among IT managers. Lastly, the practical applicability and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Abstract Background: Around 45% of Swedish consumers canceled their online purchase in 2018, due to too high delivery fees and issues concerning payments. This research is focusing on e-payments by utilizing the Technology Acceptance Model 3 and its determinants perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, and how they contribute to the e-payment method decision. Additionally, the relevance of online trust and online security are examined in relation to purchasing cancellations due to trust and security issues in e-payment methods.   Purpose: The purpose of this research paper is to understand how Swedish millennial consumers’ perceptions of online security and online trust of e-payment methods effect on online purchasing cancellation. Furthermore, this paper examines how perceptions of usefulness and ease of use contribute as determinants in choosing between e-payment methods according to Swedish millennial consumers.   Method: The research is carried out in a qualitative manner by conducting a series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Fifteen Swedish millennials contributed to the empirical study. The gathered primary data is analyzed and then presented in chapter 4 and connected to the existing literature in chapter 5.   Conclusion: For the Swedish millennials, both online trust and online security are perceived as important determinants when evaluating whether or not the e-payment method could be used. When choosing between different e-payment methods, perceived ease of use seemed to be more important. Additionally, the decisions are made based on which e-payment method is secure, trustworthy, and easy to use. The presence of those determinants also increases perceived usefulness. When making purchases online domestically it appears that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness weight heavier. While trust and security are given more importance if the purchase is made from a foreign website.

Today, advances in the technological sector spurs invention toward new heights. What can be achieved today was just decades ago science fiction. Recent years, augmented reality has emerged which is explained by Kipper & Rampolla (2012, p. 1) as a technology that combines the real world with virtual objects which creates a supplement to reality. With its ability to strengthen the impressions of reality by weaving the physical and the digital world together, enables it to be used in various settings. The retail industry has been struggling as of late, with e-commerce flourishing on one hand but contrastingly classic brick-and-mortar stores foreclosing by the thousands. Thus, a technology that has the ability to combine these two channels would thus act as a mitigating force enabling customers to virtually try on their clothes or make furniture digitally appear in their living room. There are numerous possibilities with this technology, given that it can be used in different industries as well with examples from the marketing and gaming industries as the most prominent. What is evident is its ability to interact and engage, making it a usable tool for many activities. Thus, through this thesis we study if augmented reality can affect consumer engagement, and if so which attributes of it has significant positive relationships with the dimensions of consumer engagement. In this thesis, we first provide a framework in which to measure augmented reality in general settings quantitatively, through the use of attributes. These attributes consist of; Interactivity, Playfulness (Escapism & Enjoyment), Service Excellence, Aesthetics, Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness. We then hypothesize the attributes relationship with two dimensions of consumer engagement identified by Hollebeek et al. (2014); Affection and Cognitive Processing. However, Ease of Use and Service Excellence were not tested in this thesis, as a result of unsatisfactory loadings in the factor analysis. Through an online survey, 79 useful responses were collected and used in testing the hypotheses. Significant positive relationships were found for all tested attributes and Affection, and further significant positive relationships were found between Aesthetics and Perceived Usefulness with Cognitive Processing. It is our belief that this thesis further develops and solidify the current work with consumer engagement quantitively by validating the use of a known framework. Further, it adds to the literature by adopting a general definition of the concept of consumer engagement. This thesis also adds to quantitative work with augmented reality by creating and using a framework in which to study the attributes of augmented reality in a general setting, which has not been done previously. For practitioners, this thesis provides insight into which attributes of augmented reality systems should be emphasized in order to maximize consumer engagement. The thesis ends in suggestions for future research, where we call upon further testing on consumer engagement across different contexts with the use of Hollebeek et al.’s (2014) framework. Such work could lead to a universally accepted quantitative scale for measuring consumer engagement. Lastly, adopting the framework for augmented reality presented in this thesis and applying it to further contexts could yield valuable results, and further tests on Ease of Use and Service Excellence to validate their importance for consumer engagement would be of utmost interest.

Este estudo teve como objetivo a mensuração do grau de eficácia da utilização do Balanced Scorecard – BSC como instrumento de apoio à tomada de decisões estratégicas no Centro Universitário do Leste de Minas Gerais – Unileste-MG. Inicialmente, foi realizado um levantamento bibliográfico sobre o assunto, com o intuito de dar suporte à implementação do instrumento na referida instituição de ensino superior. Através desse levantamento, foi possível mostrar os antecedentes do surgimento do BSC, os conceitos inerentes à utilização do mesmo, as definições encontradas na literatura e o seu funcionamento. Além disso, foram destacados os diversos usos do BSC, bem como os aspectos positivos e negativos do instrumento, e as dificuldades de implementação da ferramenta reportados pela literatura consultada. Num segundo momento, com a implantação do BSC na Instituição, foi possível a comparação entre as dificuldades reportadas pela literatura e aquelas encontradas na sua aplicação no Unileste-MG. Após a sua implantação, foram aplicadas entrevistas contendo questões visando verificar a utilização ou não do BSC pelos gestores do Unileste-MG. Os dados indicaram que, no momento apurado pela pesquisa e nessa instituição especificamente, o BSC não foi eficaz no apoio à tomada de decisões, tendo em vista a sua não utilização pelos envolvidos no processo, conforme deveria ter ocorrido. O resultado alcançado não invalida a utilidade do instrumento, pois são apresentados aos futuros pesquisadores e interessados no uso do BSC os percalços que devem ser removidos para que a ferramenta seja útil como apoio à tomada de decisões gerenciais. Deve-se ainda destacar como um sub-produto da pesquisa o estabelecimento de um modelo de implementação do BSC em Instituição Privada de Ensino Superior que, por ser bastante genérico, pode ser adaptado com facilidade a outros tipos de entidades. / The objective of this study is to measure the degree of effectiveness of the utilization of the Balanced Scorecard – BSC as a supportive tool to the strategic decisions that are made in the Centro Universitário do Leste de Minas Gerais – Unileste-MG. As a beginning, a bibliographic research was made about the subject, with the purpose of giving support to the implementation of the tool in this educational institution. By the research made, it was possible to identify the previous history of the BSC, the concepts related to the use of it, definitions found in the literature and its operation. Besides that, the varied uses of the BSC were pointed out, as well as the positive and negative aspects of this tool and the difficulties towards its implementation reported by the literature consulted. In a second stage, with the implementation, it was possible to compare the difficulties reported by the literature and those found in its application in Unileste-MG. After the implementation, interviews were made containing questions to verify the utilization or not of the BSC by the administrators of the institution. The data indicated that in the period considered by the study and in this institution specifically, the BSC didn’t obtain a degree of effectiveness as a supportive tool, due to the not utilization of it by the individuals involved in the process, as it was expected. The result obtained does not invalid the utilization of the tool, because the difficulties that must be solved so that the tool might be useful to support making decisions in management were presented to the future researches and those interested in the use of the BSC. As a sub-product of this study, it was pointed out a establishment of an implementation model of BSC in a graduate educational institution, and because this model is rather generic, may be easily adapted to other kinds of entities.

Esse estudo investiga a influência do estilo de uso do orçamento empresarial sobre as percepções de seus públicos usuários. O uso do orçamento segue o framework de Adler e Borys (1996) que trata do uso coercitivo e facilitador. As percepções dos usuários do orçamento perfazem a utilidade do artefato e o nível de críticas atribuídas. Essa análise retoma a discussão se o orçamento se caracteriza como um importante instrumento de gestão, tendo em vista diversos estudos que tem defendido sua melhoria (Activity-Based Budgeting) ou abandono (Beyond Budgeting). A discussão é baseada em um framework relativamente recente nas pesquisas de Controle Gerencial (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004) e com potencial para futuras pesquisas no contexto nacional e internacional. O modelo teórico e as hipóteses de pesquisa foram construídos com o objetivo de discutir a influência do uso do orçamento sobre a percepção de utilidade e o nível de críticas. Dentre as dimensões do uso coercitivo e facilitador se destacam a capacidade de reparo, a transparência interna, a transparência global e a flexibilidade. A percepção de utilidade envolve a utilidade para a gestão e relevância para tomada de decisão. O nível de críticas abrange os efeitos perversos, inadaptação ao ambiente, ritual e foco excessivo no curto prazo. A metodologia do estudo é um levantamento com gerentes de uma empresa brasileira de grande porte do setor elétrico (survey single entity). Foram realizadas nove entrevistas com gerentes da empresa e elaborado um questionário eletrônico aplicado a uma amostra de 72 respondentes de uma população de aproximadamente 180, abrangendo gerentes de diversas áreas da organização. As informações coletadas nas entrevistas foram analisadas qualitativamente e apresentadas de modo descritivo, caracterizando os entrevistados, sua interface com o processo orçamentário, além de suas percepções. Os dados coletados pelo survey foram submetidos a técnicas de estatística descritiva e multivariada de equações estruturais (MEE-PLS). Os respondentes tem em média 25 anos de empresa. A análise descritiva do uso do orçamento empresarial indica que, para as dimensões transparência interna e transparência global, o orçamento está mais próximo do estilo de uso facilitador e, pela capacidade de reparo e flexibilidade, mais próximo do uso coercitivo. Além disso, a percepção de utilidade do orçamento é levemente alta e o nível de críticas é baixo. Quanto ao modelo de equações estruturais, se constatou influência indireta do uso facilitador do orçamento sobre o nível de críticas. Pôde-se verificar que o estilo de uso facilitador do orçamento influencia positivamente a percepção de utilidade e negativamente o nível de críticas. Esses resultados não indicam, necessariamente, que o uso facilitador do orçamento seja \"melhor\" que o coercitivo. Na realidade, as empresas tem a liberdade de determinar a forma como pretendem utilizar esse artefato contábil, e ao mesmo tempo devem estar cientes de que essas escolhas influenciam as percepções dos gestores. O presente trabalho fornece indicativos de modelos presentes na literatura que propiciam uma melhor compreensão desses aspectos. / This study investigates the influence of the budgeting style applied on users perceptions. Budgeting use follows the framework of Adler and Borys (1996) dealing with the coercive use and enabling use. Users\' perceptions of the budget account for the usefulness of the artifact and the level of criticism assigned. This analysis discusses if budgeting is characterized as an important management tool in view of several studies that have defended its improvement (Activity-Based Budgeting) or its abandonment (Beyond Budgeting). The discussion is based on a relatively recent framework in Management Control research (Ahrens & Chapman, 2004) and has a potential for future research in national and international context. The theoretical model and research hypotheses were constructed in order to discuss the influence of the style of budgeting use on the perceived usefulness and on the level of criticism. Among the dimensions of coercive and enabling use are repair capacity, internal transparency, global transparency, and flexibility. The perceived usefulness involves the utility and relevance to the management for decision making. The level of criticism covers the perverse effects on people, inability to adapt to the environment, ritual and excessive focus on the short term. The methodology of the study is a survey carried on with managers of a large Brazilian company of the electric sector (survey single entity). Nine interviews were developed with managers and an electronic questionnaire was also applied to a sample of 72 respondents from a population of approximately 180, including managers from different areas of the organization. The information collected in the interviews were qualitatively analyzed and presented in a descriptive manner, characterizing the respondents, their interface with the budget process, and their perceptions. The data collected by the survey were subjected to descriptive statistics and multivariate Structural Equation Modeling (SEM - PLS). Respondents have working time mean of 25 years in the organization. The descriptive analysis of the use of the corporate budgeting indicates that the dimensions of internal transparency and global transparency are closer to the enabling use. The repair capacity and flexibility are nearest to the coercive use. Furthermore, the perceived usefulness of the budgeting is slightly high and the level of critics is low. As for the structural equation model we have found indirect influence of the budgeting enabling use on the level of criticism. It was verified that the enabling style of budgeting use has positive influence on the perceived usefulness and negative on the level of criticism. These results do not necessarily indicate that the enabling style of budgeting use is \"better\" than coercive. In fact, companies have the freedom to determine how they will use this accounting artifact. Meanwhile organizations should be aware that these choices influence the perceptions of managers. This paper provides indicative of models in the literature which propitiate a better understanding of these aspects.

This essay aims to problematize the concepts of usefulness and lust in relation to reading and literature. My analysis is based in Sara Mannheimer’s novel Handlingen. The research questions seeks to interpret the character´s understanding of the two ideas usefulness and lust, and further try to analyze how the character's view on literature and abstract thinking is determined by the two concepts. With theories on cleaning, baking and the practical work as well as theories of reading, the discussions with the novel´s character evolved to think further about the concept of literature and what it really stands for in one’s life. The results from the analysis of the novel resulted in a dualistic view between the two concepts usefulness and lust where the entrance to the world of literature is conditioned by having genuine lust for reading. I further problematize this view with a discussion about what it means to be an authentic person and that it does not reject the union of the two concepts. Another central point in the analysis of the novel is how usefulness relates to organization and a clear system whereas lust speaks to the abstract thinking and chaos. My conclusion consists of the union of being open to abstraction and the fact that a person cannot know certain things that will always be out of reach for us, such as existential questions and so on. This could mean that the usefulness and lust are dependent of each other in one’s life, at least that they are not ruling out each other’s existence.

Organizations invest sizable amounts of financial and human capital toward developing and implementing innovative technology solutions that will help them achieve organizational objectives. Professionals are now able to use online social networking technology to maintain and grow their network of business contacts virtually, resulting in increased efficiency and the ability to foster relationships with colleagues who otherwise would not be accessible. Organizations can use the benefits of online social networking to their strategic advantage if they understand the nature of the technology and how it is used. The Technology Acceptance Model is often used to explain the acceptance of new technology at work, and can predict which workers are likely to adopt a newly-implemented technology as it was intended to be used. It is not clear, however, if the model can predict the acceptance of social networking technology, and it does not account for experience the user might have had with similar systems. Five hundred students completed a questionnaire about their prior usage of online social networking systems as well as an assessment of their perceptions of the technology in terms of ease of use and usefulness, and the social forces influencing usage decisions. Findings suggest the Technology Acceptance Model is a reasonable model of the acceptance of online social networking systems, but the subjective norm component was not predictive of acceptance.

Adverse drug events, resulting in preventable patient harm or death, are of great concern. To keep patients safe, hospitals have implemented barcode medication administration (BCMA) technology for RNs who have accepted this technology with varying levels of satisfaction. When nurses are dissatisfied with a BCMA system, they may find alternative methods to complete their work. Framed by the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), this analytic, cross-sectional study aimed to understand the relationship between BCMA satisfaction and workarounds, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of a BCMA system by 80 hospital-based RNs in northeastern US. Data were collected using the Workaround Usage and Satisfaction with Barcoding Instrument for Nurses (WUSBIN), which was adapted from Hurley's (2006) Medication Administration System-Nurses Assessment of Satisfaction Scale (MAS-NAS) Halbesleben and Rathert's (2010) Workaround Assessment. Results suggested that RNs who were more satisfied with the BCMA system were less likely to use workarounds than nurses who were less satisfied (r2(78)= -.681, p < .05). Significant relationships were noted among BCMA Satisfaction and PEOU (r2(78) = -.725, p < .05), Workaround Usage and PEOU (r2(78) =.943, p < .05) and Workaround Usage and PU (r2(78)=.501, p < .05). RNs perceived the BCMA system to be easy to use (PEOU), but not very useful (PU). BCMA Satisfaction was significantly related to the use of six workarounds, while Workaround Usage was significantly related to five. Significant relationships were also noted among both BCMA Satisfaction (r2(78) = -.393, p < .01), and Workaround Usage (r2(78) = .423, p < .01) with the total number of workarounds used. Significant relationships were found among demographic variables, BCMA Satisfaction, and Workaround Usage. Since admitting to the use of workarounds may be a sensitive matter for RNs, measuring BCMA satisfaction may help understand the state of patient safety related to medication administration. Based on high satisfaction scores and low workaround usage, a profile may be developed to identify nurse champions to improve quality of care. Further research is indicated to fully understand these possibilities. / School of Nursing / Nursing / PhD / Dissertation