a b s t r a c tThis study examines the effects of the differences in organizational identities that emerged during a postmerger project that aimed at unifying the laboratory services of a large healthcare center that resulted from the merging of three hospitals by supporting them with a unique information system. We draw on the concepts of organizational identity and sensemaking to analyze the laboratory information system implementation project. Organizational identity is conceptualized as the mental representation that organizational members have of themselves as a social group in terms of practices, norms, and values and how they understand themselves to be different from members of other organizations. Data analysis suggests that divergent organizational identities and team members' alternative interpretations of others' practices, norms and organizational symbols, coexist during the post-merger integration phase. These interpretations are reflected in the final functionality of the information system that was different from the planned one.

This study addresses the factors that could affect the intention of physicians to adopt telemedicine technology. Based on the theoretical foundations of technology adoption models, a revised model is proposed and tested via a questionnaire with two groups of physicians that were, at the time of the survey, just about to use telemedicine technology.Group A is composed of physicians from a large urban healthcare provider institution involved in clinical, teaching, and research activities, and will soon use a telemedicine intranet solution. Group B is composed of physicians from rural areas who will eventually be linked to a telemedicine network.Results analyzed with PLS indicate that in both cases, physicians' perception of usefulness of telemedicine is positively related to their intention to adopt this technology. This is the only common result between the two groups. Other significant yet different results indicate that the reactions of two types of potential adopters of telemedicine are influenced by their background and environment. This revised model helps in distinguishing the shades in the intention of adopting telemedicine between two distinct groups of physicians.

When organizations merge, information systems (IS) need to be integrated to span the demarcations between the previously independent entities, be to bridge the pre-merger ISs or as new, single IS. Although research stresses the important role played by ISs in support of the combined organizations, there is a paucity of studies on the process of IS integration. Grounded in the practice perspective of knowledge and on the concept of organizational identity, we first propose a conceptual framework that conjectures about effective knowledge sharing processes, boundary objects and the role that boundary spanners are expected to play if they are to be effective. Then, we assess the relational dynamics suggested by our framework in four existing case studies from the academic literature that present rich post-merger IS integration data.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)