IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tjisxx/v26y2017i5p451-468.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Service robots in hospitals: new perspectives on niche evolution and technology affordances

Author

Listed:
  • Tobias Mettler
  • Michaela Sprenger
  • Robert Winter

Abstract

Changing demands in society and the limited capabilities of health systems have paved the way for robots to move out of industrial contexts and enter more human-centered environments such as health care. We explore the shared beliefs and concerns of health workers on the introduction of autonomously operating service robots in hospitals or professional care facilities. By means of Q-methodology, a mixed research approach specifically designed for studying subjective thought patterns, we identify five potential end-user niches, each of which perceives different affordances and outcomes from using service robots in their working environment. Our findings allow for better understanding resistance and susceptibility of different users in a hospital and encourage managerial awareness of varying demands, needs, and surrounding conditions that a service robot must contend with. We also discuss general insights into presenting the Q-methodology results and how an affordance-based view could inform the adoption, appropriation, and adaptation of emerging technologies.

Suggested Citation

  • Tobias Mettler & Michaela Sprenger & Robert Winter, 2017. "Service robots in hospitals: new perspectives on niche evolution and technology affordances," European Journal of Information Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(5), pages 451-468, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:26:y:2017:i:5:p:451-468
    DOI: 10.1057/s41303-017-0046-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/s41303-017-0046-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41303-017-0046-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hazra, Ummaha & Priyo, Asad Karim Khan, 2020. "Mobile financial services in Bangladesh: Understanding the affordances," MPRA Paper 117852, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Saggi Nevo & Dorit Nevo & Alain Pinsonneault, 2021. "Personal Achievement Goals, Learning Strategies, and Perceived IT Affordances," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(4), pages 1298-1322, December.
    3. Ding, Bin & Li, Yameng & Miah, Shah & Liu, Wei, 2024. "Customer acceptance of frontline social robots—Human-robot interaction as boundary condition," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:26:y:2017:i:5:p:451-468. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tjis .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.