A Strategic Improvisation Model: A Case Study Of Healthcare Information Systems Design

Pressured by the speed of technological advances, the need for change and improvisation has hit the healthcare industry. Now society demands that healthcare providers offer better patient care through the creative use of information technologies. In turn, healthcare management asserts pressure on IS/IT practitioners to expand the boundaries for innovative IS design strategies. Research on healthcare information systems (HIS) improvisation remains relatively underdeveloped. To fill this gap, from the perspective of a case study, we use both organizational improvisation and bricolage theoretical lenses to examine how strategic improvisation might give rise to superior HIS design. Theoretically, we proposed an inductively-derived conceptual model of improvisation that explains how strategic improvisation contributes to the formation of superior HIS that offer value added and quality patient-centric healthcare delivery. Professionally, this study contributes three key insights for IS improvisation in the healthcare industry with application to wider information systems development.