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Critical Issues for the Development of Sustainable E-health Solutions pp 313–330Cite as

Agency Theory in E-Healthcare and Telemedicine: A Literature Study

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Part of the book series: Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age ((Healthcare Delivery Inform. Age))

Abstract

The agency theory is concerned with agency relationships between two or more parties involved in an economic transaction. IS research has attributed this theory with being helpful for describing and explaining effects of ICT usage. The healthcare domain is subject of both agency relationships and the adoption of various ICT. While IS research has applied agency theory to a lot of different domains already, often with very useful results, a broader view of the particular role of agency theory in e-health research does not exist yet. This chapter thus analyses (1) to which extent agency relationships have been considered in e-health research, and (2) to which extent e-health research explicitly makes use of the insights, and results of agency theory. For this purpose, we report the process and results of a two-step literature review. The first step covers IS journals in general and identifies research that employs an agency theory perspective. The second step studies a specific e-health application, telemedicine, and unfolds the consideration of agency relationships.

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Acknowledgement

We wish to thank Stefan Kirn and Marcus Mueller for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. We thank Ansger Jacob, Marcus Mueller, Andreas Scheuermann and Daniel Weiss for contributing to the classification and coding of telemedicine articles.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems 2, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Joerg Leukel, Julia Fernandes, Anna Heidebrecht & Simone Schillings

Authors
  1. Joerg Leukel
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  2. Julia Fernandes
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  3. Anna Heidebrecht
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  4. Simone Schillings
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joerg Leukel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. RMIT University, School of Business Information Technolog, Melbourne VIC, Australia

    Nilmini Wickramasinghe

  2. Coventry University, Health Design and Technology Institute (, COVENTRY West Midlands, United Kingdom

    Rajeev Bali

  3. Dept. Management, Turku School of Economics & Business Administration, Turku, Finland

    Reima Suomi

  4. Lehrst. Wirtschaftsinformatik II (510 O), Universität Hohenheim Fak. Wirtschafts-/Sozialwissenschaften, Stuttgart, Germany

    Stefan Kirn

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Leukel, J., Fernandes, J., Heidebrecht, A., Schillings, S. (2012). Agency Theory in E-Healthcare and Telemedicine: A Literature Study. In: Wickramasinghe, N., Bali, R., Suomi, R., Kirn, S. (eds) Critical Issues for the Development of Sustainable E-health Solutions. Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1536-7_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1536-7_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-1535-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-1536-7

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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