The post mortem paradox: a Delphi study of IT specialist perceptions

While post mortem evaluation (PME) has long been advocated as a means of improving development practices by learning from IT project failures, few organizations conduct PMEs. The purpose of the study is to explain this discrepancy between theory and practice. This paper integrates findings from a Delphi study of what experienced practitioners perceive as the most important barriers to conducting PMEs with insights from organizational learning theory. The results suggest that there are critical tensions between development practices and learning contexts in many organizations, and adopting PMEs in these cases is likely to reinforce organizational learning dysfunctions rather than improve current development practices. Based on these findings, we argue that the PME literature has underestimated the limits to learning in most IT organizations and we propose to explore paradoxical thinking to help researchers frame continued inquiry into PME and to help managers overcome learning dysfunctions as they push for more widespread use of PMEs.     

A Comparative Study on the Implementation Inhibitors and Facilitators of Management Information Systems and Integrated Decision Support Systems: A Perception of IT Practitioners in Mexico

A comparative study of inhibitors and facilitators for implementing management information systems (MIS) and integrated decision support systems (integrated DSS) is reported. Knowing implementation inhibitors and facilitators for a specific IT system is useful for IT practitioners to prepare and use implementation checklists and guidelines when they are confronted with such tasks. In the international literature, several studies have reported implementation critical success factors for a single component of integrated DSS. However, studies on specific inhibitors and facilitators for integrated DSS implementation are still scarce. Consequently, there is very limited and incomplete knowledge about them for DSS implementations. This research addresses this knowledge gap by using collected data from IT practitioners located in medium and large organizations in the central region of an emergent economy (Mexico country), and compares the findings with implementation inhibitors and facilitators for MIS reported in the international literature. Relevant and particular findings suggest critical differences that should be considered for implementing integrated DSS and not treating them as MIS in similar regions of emergent economies. Their utilization in regions of well-developed economies is encouraged to be further studied through a cross-country study.     

Multi‐contextuality in boundary‐spanning practices

The capability to establish boundary‐spanning practices within and across organizations has for long been recognized as a key strategic resource. As organizations are becoming distributed and dynamic, they will be increasingly populated by multiple functional, geographical, hierarchical and professional boundaries. The inherent complexity of such settings makes it difficult for organizations to leverage their boundary‐spanning practices. Information technology (IT) systems have been hailed as a critical enabler of boundary spanning. However, there is little knowledge on how organizations are affected by the introduction of different types of IT systems. Building on an interpretive case study of Swedish transport organizations, this paper explores consequences of sensor technology for boundary spanning. The paper contributes with an understanding of what coexisting use contexts mean for boundary‐spanning practices. A theoretical implication is that such multi‐contextuality requires an integrative view on boundary spanning that combines insights from the organizational innovation and work practice literatures.     

Information technology: a study of performance and the role of human and organizational factors

The aim of this study was to gather and collate information from the major researchers and consultancies in the UK regarding the performance of Information Technology (IT) and the role of human and organizational factors. The findings are based on the experience of 45 of the leading experts in the UK, drawing on a collective sample of approximately 14,000 organizations, covering all major sectors of economic activity and a comprehensive range of information technologies. The main findings are that 80–90% of IT investments do not meet their performance objectives and the reasons for this are rarely purely technical in origin. The context of technical change, the ways in which IT is developed and implemented, a range of human and organizational factors, and the roles of managers and end-users, are identified as critical areas affecting performance. A major implication is that the poor performance of IT systems is the result of a complex set of interacting forces that will be difficult to change. The study reports ideas concerning ‘best practice’ within companies, along with some suggestions for what needs to be done on a national scale to improve performance and practice in this area. A key goal is that action on these human and organizational issues becomes embedded in practice, part of the natural way of managing organizational and technical change.     

Letter from the editor

Abstract

Organizational context plays an important role in how organizations develop and implement IT strategies and plans. Since, in developing nations like India where, in the presence of highly skilled based of technical manpower, embedded organizational and cultural issues exert a strong impact on strategies adopted by organizations, it becomes important to identify organizational attributes that determine IT effectiveness. In this paper we investigate the critical nexus between IT planning and IT effectiveness in the Indian corporate milieu with the aim of identifying strategies and practices that could result in effective IT usage in spite of organizational and cultural constraints. Empirical support was provided for this study by in‐depth interviews conducted with systems managers and, in some instances, CEOs. Results indicate that the majority of the organizations do not use IT effectively. Moreover, some of these deficiencies can be linked to planning and strategic aspects of IT management. Results are discussed in the light of existing conditions and the main outcome that emerges is that if organizations in India do not develop and implement strategies to use IT for both incremental as well as radical organizational improvements, they are not likely to experience significant IT‐related benefits.     

IT-enabled change: evaluating an improvisational perspective

This paper presents an empirical study into a hierarchical organization's experience with the adoption and use of an adaptive information technology, in this case a workflow application. The paper takes an improvisational perspective on the change process and assesses it through a case study which examines the organization's experiences in terms of anticipated, opportunity-based and emergent changes to their processes, structure and culture that were enabled by the introduction of the workflow application. The findings build upon Orlikowski and Hofman's improvisational change model by evaluating the model in a different organizational context to that of the original study. The findings reveal that ongoing improvisational changes can occur in hierarchical organizations and that improvisations and adaptations can occur in organizations which adopt adaptive IT provided that ongoing support for change management is forthcoming. The findings also suggest that there is a correlation between the level of customer dissatisfaction and the emergence of any local improvisations regardless of the organization type. This implies that an improvisational perspective may be useful for hierarchical organizations which introduce new technology as the local improvisations which can occur may be leveraged for advantage. The study also raises important questions about the categorisation of technologies as adaptive and critically reflects on this aspect of the improvisational change model.     

The influence of ethnicity on organizational commitment and merit pay of IT workers: the role of leader support

Projections of looming shortages in the supply of skilled IT workers, along with high employee replacement costs, make employee attraction, retention and support a pressing concern for organizations. One potential remedy for these shortages is to focus more attention on historically underrepresented groups. We explore ways organizations can support ethnic minority IT professionals to enhance their career success. Integrating affective, cognitive and social perspectives through affective events theory and social exchange theory, our objective is to explore the implications of ethnic minority status for the relationship between leader support (i.e., mentoring and leader–member exchange (LMX)) and subjective and objective indicators of career success (i.e., organizational commitment and merit pay) among IT workers. To test the model, we conducted a field study of 289 IT workers in a Fortune 500 company. Our results showed that LMX influenced organizational commitment for ethnic minorities, while career mentoring and LMX influenced organizational commitment for majorities. Psychosocial mentoring influenced merit pay for ethnic minorities, while neither LMX nor mentoring influenced merit pay for majorities. Our study contributes to the literature on IT personnel issues by exploring how and why these leader support mechanisms enhance organizational commitment and merit pay for IT workers. Moreover, we demonstrate that ethnicity is an important consideration for researchers studying organizational commitment, merit pay, mentoring and LMX. Our findings suggest that managers can boost organizational commitment among IT workers by focusing on LMX and career mentoring. Moreover, they may want to place particular emphasis on psychosocial mentoring and interventions to enhance LMX for their ethnic minority IT workers.     

Information Technology and organizational innovation: Harmonious information technology affordance and courage-based actualization

Researchers and practitioners have long believed that information technology (IT) is a key tool for fostering innovation. However, there is a certain inconsistency in the literature, which makes it challenging for researchers to figure out exactly how and why IT plays such a pivotal, strategic organizational role. The motivation for this research is the multiple contradictory results reported by studies investigating the influence of information technology (IT) on organizational innovation. This study utilizes a fit-based perspective in an attempt to disentangle these contradictions. Using Venkatraman’s (1989) seminal paper on fit, we conceive of two critical fit-based concepts: harmonious IT affordance in an organization (HITA) and a subsequent fit between HITA and organizational courage. HITA reflects a covariance fit (coalignment) between the three major IT affordances in an organization—collaborative affordance, organizational memory affordance, and process management affordance. Organizational courage reflects the boldness (risk-taking ability) of the organization. Finally, HITA and organizational courage represent a matching fit (reflected as actualized HITA) that influences two kinds of innovation: exploratory and exploitative. Two studies, conducted in the US and Chinese contexts, provide support for this theory. The main contribution of the paper is in showing that IT can lead to innovation if (a) organizational IT affordances harmoniously coalign (as HITA); (b) and, organizational courage acts as a powerful contingency that actualizes HITA, and this actualized HITA influences innovation.     

Associating organizational strategic performance with information technology investment: an exploratory research

In the last twenty years, firms have witnessed an explosive growth in information technology (IT) investment. This is true both for manufacturing industries and service industries. The existing literature on IT investment and organizational strategic performance, however, provides very little evidence linking IT investment to organizational strategic and economic performance. The present research investigates whether certain IT investment measures are useful in differentiating organizational economic performance among the most effective information technology users. Eight measures were used to represent IT investment. Ten ratios were utilised to measure organizational strategic and economic performance. The sample organizations were analysed using multidimensional cluster analysis. The results of the analysis suggest that a clear distinction exists between organizations in terms of IT investment and organizational strategic and economic performance. This is true even among the most effective users of information technology. The results also suggest that the majority of the organizations that are investing more in IT seem to be achieving superior strategic and economic performance.     

Extending technology usage to work settings: The role of perceived work compatibility in ERP implementation

Spanning over three decades and hundreds of studies, researchers have generated models, that examined user perceptions of technological attributes presumed to influence intention to use IT and consequent usage behavior. While these theories have provided reasonable explanations of IT usage across a broad range of technological and task settings, they did not address the role of IT in organizations, though they have been tested in organizational contexts, the models have not been modified to fit the context of organizational work. Current models are good at explaining IT usage in personal-settings, but they have not adequately examined the role of IT in organizations and thus have limited explanatory power in such settings. Furthermore, organizations deploy IT both to maximize its usage and to derive performance benefits from it. However, current IT usage models generally only consider IT usage as the dependent variable, without examining its performance impact. We extended IT usage models to include the role of IT's perceived work compatibility in shaping users’ IT usage intention, usage, and performance in work settings. The model was empirically validated using a field survey of 138 users of ERP systems in 62 firms in China.     

It governance in the public sector: a conceptual model

Information technology governance (ITG) has been identified as an organizational ability of great importance for IT strategic alignment and the delivery of business though IT. However, the results and contribution of ITG are poorly understood. This work presents an explanatory model of the effects of IT governance mechanisms on IT and organizational performance of public organizations. To test the model, data was collected from a survey conducted in 146 Brazilian public organizations. Partial least squares analysis was applied to test the proposed model. The results indicate that (i) IT performance is positively correlated with organizational performance, (ii) relational mechanisms between IT and a business are determinant factors for the performance of IT, and also positively correlated with organizational performance, and (iii), decision structure and process maturity are not significantly correlated with IT performance.     

Tailoring IT support to communities of practice

Many organizations have benefited from recognizing communities of practice (COPs) operating in their midst. By identifying a group as a COP, an organization has made a critical skill area visible. Without this awareness it would be more likely, for example, that the corporate talent in auditing software processes could quietly disappear. With the importance of COPs established, organizations can now turn their attention to ensuring that their IT and knowledge management systems enable COPs to flourish. A simple folder on a corporate server to share documents is an example of such support. More comprehensive support to a COP may include virtual space on the corporate intranet for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, expertise location, and content structuring (B. Lewis, "On-Demand KM: A Two-Tier Architecture", IT Professional, Jan.-Feb. 2002, pp. 27-33). As organizations decide how to support COPs, they should know that COPs are not in any way uniform entities. There is wide variation among COPs and understanding these differences can go a long way toward providing support that is truly well matched to the needs of each one. Two observations are keys to understanding the variety of COPs that are candidates for organizational support: The number of potential COPs is great, and, there are many kinds of groups and communities; not all of them are COPs.     

Information technology,the organizational capability of proactive corporate environmental strategy and firm performance: a resource-based analysis

The study of the relationships between information technology (IT), environmental organizational issues and firm performance is a cutting-edge research topic for the information systems (IS) community. However, at present we know very little about these relationships. Drawing on the perspective of IT-enabled organizational capabilities and the literature on organizations and the natural environment, our study introduces conceptually the construct organizational capability of proactive corporate environmental strategy to the IS field. We propose that IT capability may enable the implementation of a proactive environmental strategy and that this strategy could play a significant role in determining the business value of IT. Using structural equations modeling with data collected from 63 firms, we find that IT capability is an enabler of proactive environmental strategy and that this strategy plays a significant role in mediating the effects of IT on firm performance. Our study provides initial evidence on the role of IT in the implementation of proactive environmental practices. Our results suggest to IT executives that their decisions matter in shaping environmental sustainability, which in turn will generate business value from IT.     

Adoption of open source software in organizations: A socio-cognitive perspective

Open source software (OSS) is an important trend in the information technology adoption landscape. It has received considerable attention in the scientific literature, but mostly in the professional press. In fact, there is much debate over its actual commercial and organizational value. Since the public discourse accompanying an IT may influence adoption decisions, it is important to consider IT specialists’ perceptions of the discourse on OSS. In this study, we investigated the relationship between IT specialists’ profiles, IT specialists’ reception of the public discourse on OSS, and their organizations’ receptivity to OSS. Drawing on the socio-cognitive perspective of IT innovation adoption and the organizing vision theory, a survey of 271 IT specialists was conducted to examine these issues. Our results indicate that a majority of IT specialists in our sample are rather neutral about the OSS concept conveyed in the public discourse. However, our sample also comprises respondents with more extreme perceptions who can be classified as either supporters or detractors. Our results indicate that detractors have more years of experience but have been less exposed to OSS than supporters, and that IT specialists’ perceptions of the OSS concept are positively associated with their organizations’ openness to OSS adoption and, to a lesser extent, with the existence of an organizational policy that favors OSS adoption. Altogether, our findings provide strong support for the organizing vision theory and the idea that the popularity of an IT innovation concept favors the adoption of the material IT innovation in organizations. By providing a preliminary test of a nomological network of IT specialists’ perceptions of the OSS concept, our study offers insights as to why organizations may or may not take OSS into account in their software procurement decisions.     

Exploring the relationship between information technology investments and firm performance using regression splines analysis

Identifying the business value of information technology (IT) investments has been a major concern of managers and researchers. Various studies have addressed this issue but have provided contradictory results. Here, we explore the relationship between IT investments and firm performance using a relatively new technique, multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and attempt to answer two questions: (1) do investments in IT have a positive impact on organizational productivity? and (2) for a given level of investment, what portion of the total should be invested in IT to maximize organizational productivity? Our results suggest that depending on the conditions that applied, an unbiased observer could either conclude that investments in IT has a positive statistically significant effect on productivity, or that there is a ‘productivity’ paradox. This suggests that the relationship between IT investments and organizational performance is much more complex than that found in some other studies. Our results could also provide guidance to managers who are responsible for determining the allocation of organizational resources.     

Exploring the relationship between information technology investments and firm performance using regression splines analysis

Identifying the business value of information technology (IT) investments has been a major concern of managers and researchers. Various studies have addressed this issue but have provided contradictory results. Here, we explore the relationship between IT investments and firm performance using a relatively new technique, multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and attempt to answer two questions: (1) do investments in IT have a positive impact on organizational productivity? and (2) for a given level of investment, what portion of the total should be invested in IT to maximize organizational productivity? Our results suggest that depending on the conditions that applied, an unbiased observer could either conclude that investments in IT has a positive statistically significant effect on productivity, or that there is a ‘productivity’ paradox. This suggests that the relationship between IT investments and organizational performance is much more complex than that found in some other studies. Our results could also provide guidance to managers who are responsible for determining the allocation of organizational resources.     

Information technologies and downsizing: Examining their impact on economic performance

Recent literature analyses the economic effects of employee downsizing on organizations under a contingent framework. Information technology (IT) can be considered a relevant factor for organizations that downsize. IT could enhance knowledge management, innovation management and organizational learning. Given the damage produced by downsizing on these organizational capabilities, the aim of this research is to study the moderating role of the implementation level of IT in the relationship between downsizing and organizational economic performance. Analyzing Spanish chemical industry, our results show that this negative effect can be mitigated by IT implementation.     

Organizing Multiagent Systems

Despite all the research done in the last years on the development of methodologies for designing MAS, there is no methodology suitable for the specification and design of MAS in complex domains where both the agent view and the organizational view can be modeled. Current multiagent approaches either take a centralist, static approach to organizational design or take an emergent view in which agent interactions are not pre-determined, thus making it impossible to make any predictions on the behavior of the whole systems. Most of them also lack a model of the norms in the environment that should rule the (emergent) behavior of the agent society as a whole and/or the actions of individuals. In this paper, we propose a framework for modeling agent organizations, Organizational Model for Normative Institutions (OMNI), that allows the balance of global organizational requirements with the autonomy of individual agents. It specifies global goals of the system independently from those of the specific agents that populate the system. Both the norms that regulate interaction between agents, as well as the contextual meaning of those interactions are important aspects when specifying the organizational structure.     

Organizational impact of system quality,information quality,and service quality

Increased organizational dependence on information systems drives management attention towards improving information systems’ quality. A recent survey shows that “Improve IT quality” is one of the top concerns facing IT executives. As IT quality is a multidimensional measure, it is important to determine what aspects of IT quality are critical to organizations to help Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to devise effective IT quality improvement strategies. In this research, we model the relationship between information systems’ (IS) quality and organizational impact. We hypothesize greater organizational impact in situations in which system quality, information quality and service quality are high. We also hypothesize a positive relationship between system quality and information quality. We test our hypotheses using survey data. Our structural equation model exhibits a good fit with the observed data. Our results show that IS service quality is the most influential variable in this model (followed by information quality and system quality), thus highlighting the importance of IS service quality for organizational performance. This paper contributes theoretically to IS success models through the system quality-to-information quality and IS quality-to-organizational impact links. Implications of our results for practice and research are discussed.     

Turnover Intention of Technology Professionals: A Social Exchange Theory Perspective

Retaining skilled professionals is a critical concern for organizations because employee turnover can affect the quality of service provided by the organization and create considerable expense. Using a framework of social exchange theory, this study develops a model to investigate the interrelationships between turnover intentions, organizational commitment, and constructs of particular importance to information technology (IT) professionals. Field survey data from a large US federal agency empirically test these associations. The results confirm that IT professionals’ perceptions of their skill obsolescence, work overload, and the fairness of the rewards they receive directly influence their organizational commitment. Furthermore, their organizational commitment, perceived work overload, and fairness of rewards significantly affect turnover intention. Employees’ commitment toward the organization is an essential mediator between the perception that their skills are becoming obsolete and intention to leave the organization. Implications of these results for literature and practice are discussed.