Fragmentation of working time and smarter IS solutions

It has been commonly stated how complex it is to measure the impact of information technology on managers' productivity. We propose to go beyond the concept of productivity in order to understand causes of low productivity: one factor which we have identified is called fragmentation of working time (FWT), characterized as the effects of interruptions on productivity at work. In particular, we are interested in researching the contribution of IS solutions to solve this problem. For this purpose, we adopted action research (AR) as a research paradigm: AR enables us to study FWT and to learn from it by taking actions on social reality, that is by bringing effective remedies to our problem area in cooperation with 6 companies involved in a research project. This paper presents the various aspects of FWT and findings from the SMARTER research project.