Managing ICT Competency in Small Healthcare Centers

The role of ICT (information and communication technology) resource in the formation of cooperative alliance in healthcare, in particular, remains poorly understood and is also a relatively under-researched area. In the case of small healthcare centers forming cooperative alliance, it might lead to increased alliance commitment and/or satisfaction. Therefore, healthcare centers have recently begun to realize the importance of forming alliances in sharing their ICT competency as a strategic ICT resource to overcome many of the challenges they face. Both survey and case study approaches were adopted to evaluate the relationships between different types of ICT competency, alliance commitment, and the level of satisfaction with alliances among small healthcare centers. The results showed that symmetric contribution of ICT competency could affect the level of alliance commitment by alliance partners. The results demonstrated that alliance commitment could significantly influence both the level of idiosyncratic ICT competency developed as well as the level of satisfaction with alliance among small healthcare centers. Finally, we found that the level of idiosyncratic ICT competency developed during the alliance is positively related to the alliance satisfaction.