This article elaborates how experts employ boundary objects to perform collaborative work in situ across boundaries. Our study takes a practice lens to examine the adaptive nature of cross-boundary spanning. We conduct a field study and analyse engineers' troubleshooting tasks in maintaining sophisticated wafer-fabrication machines. Our findings report three organizing practices: identifying problem boundaries, orchestrating collective responsibilities, and developing a systemic understanding. This mode of organizing explains how experts draw lessons from boundary objects to facilitate adaptive learning and collaboration for solving complicated problems in interactive systems. Our analysis contributes to theories of cross-boundary spanning, adaptive learning, and problem-solving, and suggests practical lessons in managing cross-boundary work.

This research examines the knowledge management challenge underlying technology use. It proposes to examine the key question: how can knowledge management problems and technology adoption difficulties be analysed through experts' practices embedded in their work contexts? The problems of knowledge transfer, coordination and reuse are investigated by examining experts' practices and work contexts. The inquiry is grounded in a qualitative case study of a knowledge management system designed to support maintenance work performed by two groups of engineers in a semiconductor-fabrication equipment company. The findings illustrate two contrasting outcomes: the equipment engineers found the system to be useful; the field engineers considered it to be irrelevant to their work contexts. An analysis of the fabrication process (the technical context), engineers' professional communities (the social context), and the pace of product/process innovation (the innovative context) helps us to understand the main problems underlying knowledge transfer, coordination and reuse. Significantly, we propose a specific definition of knowledge and suggest a way to examine practices and work contexts that can help to uncover new difficulties in knowledge management system adoption. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

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The FIS has acceptable reliability, content validity, and construct validity. This scale is appropriate for use in research and clinical practice settings to evaluate the risk-benefit perceptions of pregnancy in patients with breast cancer.

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The first Patient Right to Autonomy Act enacted in Asia in 2019 has enabled every Taiwanese citizen to plan for his/her end-of-life (EOL) in case of incompetency. Advance care planning (ACP) has been highly promoted for individuals with terminal, life-threatening illnesses, particularly in the mainstream society, and efforts have been made by the Taiwanese government to train health care providers in order to optimize patients’ quality of dying. However, such advanced decisions and discussions regarding life-sustaining treatment and EOL care remain scarce among older ethnically minority patients. A multiple-case study employing a mixed-method (n = 9) was undertaken to explore indigenous patients’ ACP perceptions. Both quantitative and qualitative information was obtained from indigenous patients, a minority group whose socio-economic and educational status are different from the general Taiwanese population. An initiative was made to describe ACP behavioral awareness, intention, and readiness of older terminal patients from four tribes with seven late-stage cancers in remote, mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan. Our findings showed that according to the Transtheoretical Model, terminal indigenous patients’ ACP readiness was at a precontemplation stage. Their lack of fundamental ACP awareness, insufficient healthcare resources, life-sustaining value in a Christian faith context, and the prevalent health disparity in the remote communities have negatively affected indigenous patients’ intention to participate in ACP. We provide suggestions to further promote ACP in this group and suggest that health information should be tailored at various readiness stages in order to overcome barriers and decrease ACP literacy discrepancies. This study calls attention to an understudied area of ACP behaviors, an overlooked need in EOL care for older cancer patients of unique cultural backgrounds, and the imperativeness to ensure cultural minority group’s EOL care is consistent with patients’ preferences.

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