Resumen
This article examines an innovative information system developed recently to share patient health care information among several competing hospitals in the greater Dayton, Ohio area. Authors of this article had the opportunity to observe the development of this system, to interact extensively with three different user/developer groups and to collect evaluation data from them after the system was put into use. In this article, three general themes emerge. The first theme concerns insights gained from the differing perspectives of various user/developer groups. Based on their own interests and experience, these groups identify different achievements and problems with an existing system and recommend different changes; they also perceive the benefits of an ideal system differently. The second theme focuses on user involvement in system development. The third theme relates to the value, use, and extent of specific types of information. This study has examined a system that supports various interest groups in multiple, competing organizations.

Resumen
All business functions in the digital economy exhibit a pervasive and ever increasing demand for information, computing power and electronic communications. However with the supply of human capital possessing the knowledge and skills needed to exploit information technology (IT) falling short of that demand, all kinds of organizations around the world struggle to maximize the return from their IT investments. How do organizations cope with recruitment and retention in an IT labor market that is still highly competitive, despite the recent collapse of so many dot-coms. One approach is to attempt to increase the overall pool of IT labor. Unfortunately, individual organizations have limited power and influence in shaping broad demographic trends. Given this lack of economic influence beyond their own operations, a second useful approach for individual organizations is to develop an internal environment allowing them to attract, employ and inspire IT staff to deliver maximum performance and productivity. The senior managers adopt measures such as paying attractive salaries, providing training to keep IT knowledge and skills upto date and offering interesting things to do as ways to ensure that scarce organizational resources are invested most productively in practices that result in IT professionals willingness to stay with the organization for some desired tenure.