This dissertation is dedicated to my family. Deep gratitude for their love and support. Acknowledgements I wish to express my deep and heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. Solon Thanos. I am especially indebted to him for his invaluable comments and unfailing patience, professionalism and wisdom. His guidance and encouragement enable me to complete my dissertation successful...

Leadership is one of the most examined human behavioral phenomena. While leadership appears easy to see, it remains difficult to define. Despite the abundance of leadership theories and widely known experts, there are no generally accepted definitions of leadership. The challenge of redefining health information management (HIM) leadership is compounded by the ongoing changes in HIM and the cri...

I would like to begin by thanking Bill White and his colleagues at the BIS for organising this conference in honour of Palle Andersen and for inviting me to participate. As some of you may know, I spent a year as a visitor to the BIS in the late 1990s, and I had the good fortune to be assigned to Palle’s unit during my secondment. In fact, I was the only member of staff assigned to Palle, so he...

Ever since its launch in 2003, GMS German Medical Science benefits from the expertise of numerous reviewers. Their work is of highest value for the quality of the journal; they contribute anonymously, without remuneration and mostly in their spare time to a scientific open access journal. We would like to appreciate their efforts at least ideally at the beginning of the New Year. The editors, a...