Participating in Critical Discourse: A Critical Research Study of Clinicians’ Concerns for A Ghanaian Hospital E-mail System

ABSTRACT

A growing body of information systems (IS) literature advocates the explicit use of suitable critical theories to explore power issues in developing countries and make IS research findings more accessible to systems’ users and the wider audiences for consumption. We respond to this debate in IS by applying critical research perspectives to discuss the power implications of Internet and e-mail resource distribution in a Ghanaian teaching hospital in a way that addresses clinicians’ concerns of using Internet services for healthcare practices. We applied critical qualitative approaches to collect and analyze data from clinicians, healthcare managers, and the hospital’s internal documents. It was found that managers exercised their powers to allocate Internet facilities selectively on the contestable account that clinicians might misuse the Internet if they were given access while clinicians sought to empower themselves as co-planners who could make technology choices and add new value to the existing normative decisions of the managers. The outcomes show that critical researchers can directly relate to decision-making powers, recognize their powers and expose structures that surround them, and emancipate people whose Internet resource needs are restricted to co-involve in technology adoption and distribution processes.

KEYWORDS:

• E-mail
• Internet
• healthcare information systems
• multiple critical perspectives
• power

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the developmental feedback we received from Professor Prashant Palvia (EiC), Dr. Tim Jacks (AE) and the anonymous reviewers that enabled us to shape this paper to its publishable form. We also acknowledge the earlier feedback from Dr. Roberta Bernardi and Professor Nandish Patel. Finally, we are thankful to all participants of the study and to the Committee on Human Research and Publication Ethics, Kumasi, Ghana for approving the progress of the study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Frank Nyame-Asiamah

Frank Nyame-Asiamah is Senior Lecturer in Business Management at Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University. He is Ambassador for the CMS Community Connect@AOM Group. Previously, Frank was PhD Supervisor/Director of Study at London School of Commerce, the Associate College of Cardiff Metropolitan University, and Lecturer/Subject Lead on Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Business Studies) at Canterbury Christ Church University. Frank obtained a PhD in Management Studies from Brunel University, London. He applies critical, emergent and participative approaches to Organizational Learning and Information Systems. He also has a keen interest in corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship, curriculum management and commercial fire risk assessment.

Peter Kawalek

Peter Kawalek is Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Center for Information Management at Loughborough University School of Business and Economics. He holds visiting positions at Deusto Business School, Bilbao, and Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Ireland. He also has experience at Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, Manchester Business School, Warwick Business School and the School of Computer Science in Manchester. As well as participative approaches to Information Systems, he holds interests in Attention Economy and digitization.