The critical success factors for ERP implementation: an organizational fit perspective

Since early 1990s, many firms around the world have shifted their information technology (IT) strategy from developing information systems in-house to purchasing application software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. IT managers responsible for managing their organization’s ERP implementation view their ERP systems as their organizations’ most strategic computing platform. However, despite such strategic importance, ERP projects report an unusually high failure rate, sometimes jeopardizing the core operations of the implementing organization. This study explores the root of such high failure rate from an “organizational fit of ERP” perspective. Based on the relevant literature, we define the concept of organizational fit of ERP and examine its impact on ERP implementation, together with ERP implementation contingencies. The results from our field survey of 34 organizations show that ERP implementation success significantly depends on the organizational fit of ERP and certain implementation contingencies.     

Managing organizational identity in the e-commerce industry: An ambidexterity perspective

In the e-commerce industry, organizations should maintain an enduring and stable organizational identity to gain long-term success while also adapting quickly to the increasingly volatile environment in order to ensure profitability and survival. These ongoing paradoxical challenges concerning the management of organizational identity have been left unaddressed in existing literature. Drawing upon the literature related to organizational ambidexterity and organizational identity, this paper proposes two theoretical frameworks for systematically examining the ways in which organizations, especially those in the e-commerce industry, should manage their organizational identities by leveraging four balancing forms of organizational ambidexterity. Based on these two models, we comprehensively analyzed the case of D.com, which is China's most successful online ticket vendor. Our study not only contributes to the field of knowledge surrounding organizational identity and ambidexterity but also provides a detailed means for practitioners to manage organizational identities at both the strategic and operational levels within the e-commerce industry.     

An affordance perspective of enterprise social media and organizational socialization

In response to the challenge of socializing new IT employees, some IT departments are exploring the incorporation of enterprise social media (hereinafter ESM) as an informal organizational socialization tool. Because this is a relatively new phenomenon, little is known about how ESM facilitate employee socialization. In order to contribute to our understanding of how ESM affects employee socialization, this paper invokes a case study to explore how one organization’s implementation of an ESM for its IT new hire program influenced the socialization process and outcomes. To delve deeply into how the ESM influences socialization, we draw upon technology affordance theory to uncover the various first and second-order affordances actualized by different actor groups and the various outcomes resulting from the affordances. We then identify five generative mechanisms – bureaucracy circumvention, executive perspective, personal development, name recognition, and morale booster – that explain how the actualization of different strands of affordances by various groups of users produces eight different outcomes. Our results provide insights into the different affordances made possible by ESM in the context of a new hire socialization program and how these affordances have repercussions beyond those experienced by the individuals using the ESM. The results have important implications for new hire socialization and technology affordance research.     

A theoretical perspective on organizational culture and digitalization

Digitalization has fundamentally changed organizational structures and processes and affects how people interact with each other, thereby impacting organizational culture. Given the pervasiveness of digitalization today, it is useful to study its profound effects on organizational culture through new theoretical lenses. In this paper, we offer a fresh perspective on organizational culture in the digital world. We accomplish this by integrating two competing perspectives and then leveraging the new perspective to identify digital cultural resources and propose a conceptualization of digital culture. We frame our conceptualization around the cultural resources for digitalization and describe four digital culture archetypes.     

An exploratory investigation of the antecedents and impact of internet usage: an individual perspective

Internet usage in the US workplace is increasing at a phenomenal rate. This exploratory study examines factors influencing employee internet usage and individual perceptions of the consequences of such usage. Using the Theory of Reasoned Behaviour, a questionnaire was designed and circulated to part time MBA students in north-east United States. This preliminary study suggests that the personal factors of web skills and playfulness are associated with perceived internet usefulness, the degree of internet usage, and have both positive (enhanced job characteristics, job satisfaction) and negative (increased inefficiency) impacts. Neither the personal variables of age and gender nor any of the organizational variables are important antecedent variables. To those who perceive the internet as intimidating, there was, understandably, less internet usage. Perceived usefulness was positively related to increased time of use and internet impacts. In general, the findings indicate that extending the research on microcomputers to internet usage is a promising research focus. On the basis of this study, the leadership challenge is to harness the tremendous potential of the internet, working to control and improve inefficiencies while not discouraging internet usage.     

An exploration of psychological factors on emoticon usage and implications for judgement accuracy

Given the increasing use of online platforms, the current research comprised two studies examining links between personality and emoticon use: Study 1 explored the psychological factors associated with emoticon usage on different online platforms (N = 92), and Study 2 assessed the accuracy of a group of observers' personality judgements of Facebook users (N = 54). Participants in Study 1 comprised previously unacquainted dyads who each completed measures on their Big-5 personality, self-esteem, social anxiety, self-presentation, and self-reported usage of emoticons on email, text messages and Facebook. Participants provided Facebook data and interacted online with each other for 10-min. Trait analysis revealed that agreeableness was positively related to self-reported emoticon usage on Facebook, but not in texts or emails. In Study 2, observers viewed the Facebook stimuli and made personality assessments of the dyad members. Judgement accuracy was determined by correlating these assessments with targets' own self-reported personality. Analyses revealed the highest level of accuracy for extraversion and openness. Finally, positive correlations were found between objective usage of “happy” emoticons and observers' assessments of targets’ agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. Taken together, findings indicate the importance of specific online behaviours in self-presentation, and their impact on judgement accuracy.     

The contributing factors of continuance usage of social media: An empirical analysis

The problem of leveraging social media for establishing and sustaining consistent policies, procedures and methods of online communication can be challenging for busy professionals. To address this issue and to contribute to the literature we develop our research model to gain a deeper upstanding of the factors that influence social media continuance usage. The theoretical background for our research model are technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovation. We collected our data from college students that are enrolled in a large public university located in North America. We analyze our data using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results of our data analysis show that ease of use, usefulness, and satisfaction of social media have a positive and significant influence on social media continuance usage. Also, our results show that relative advantage, compatibility, information quality, and risk of social media have a positive influence on the usefulness of social media. We discussed the results implications for theory development and practice.     

Knowledge risks in organizational networks: The practice perspective

This commentary paper aims to highlight issues associated with the supposed ability to transfer knowledge across networks. In response to the paper “Risks in Organizational Networks: An Exploratory Framework”, (Trkman and Desouza, 2012, pp. 1–17), we argue that the taken-for-granted assumption that knowledge is transferrable represents a risk in itself. We analyze knowledge in networks using a practice perspective – in turn we consider knowledge as enacted in social practices and as context-specific. In contrast with Trkman and Desouza’s paper, we argue that if knowledge is seen as enacted in practice, a framework that maps risks associated with knowledge transfer is limiting. We conclude that, since knowing in practice is emergent and not fully controllable, adopting a set of best practices on how to effectively transfer (or not) knowledge could itself be risky for managers who then believe that knowledge can be treated as a commodity and easily moved about a network.     

Information security strategies: towards an organizational multi-strategy perspective

There considerable advice in both research and practice oriented literature on the topic of information security. Most of the discussion in literature focuses on how to prevent security attacks using technical countermeasures even though there are a number of other viable strategies such as deterrence, deception, detection and response. This paper reports on a qualitative study, conducted in Korea, to determine how organizations implement security strategies to protect their information systems. The findings reveal a deeply entrenched preventive mindset, driven by the desire to ensure availability of technology and services, and a comparative ignorance of exposure to business security risks. Whilst there was some evidence of usage of other strategies, they were also deployed in a preventive capacity. The paper presents a research agenda that calls for research on enterprise-wide multiple strategy deployment with a focus on how to combine, balance and optimize strategies.     

An organizational learning perspective on the assimilation of electronic medical records among small physician practices

Small physician practices play an essential role in the healthcare delivery system but are least likely to adopt health information technologies such as electronic medical records (EMRs). Factors contributing to low adoption include investment cost, productivity loss, and lack of financial incentives. However, these factors do not explain why some small practices, which face similar challenges nonetheless assimilate EMRs, while others do not. We investigated the assimilation of EMRs from the theoretic perspective of organizational learning in a survey of small physician practices and evaluated whether characteristics associated with organizational learning barriers are related to EMR assimilation. We found that learning-related scale, related knowledge, and diversity were positively associated with small physician practices' stage of assimilation of EMR technology. Our findings suggest that some small practices are able to overcome the substantial learning barriers presented by EMRs but that others will require support to develop sufficient learning capacity. We consider implications for practice from this research and areas requiring further research.     

The strategic value of IT insourcing: An IT-enabled business process perspective

Although research on the business impact of IT outsourcing abounds, little is known about the relative strategic value of IT outsourcing and IT insourcing. Drawing upon the knowledge-based view of the firm, this study postulates that, compared with IT outsourcing, IT insourcing is more effective for developing IT-enabled business processes (IEBP), which subsequently lead to superior firm performance. Our analysis of the data from InformationWeek and Compustat shows that IT insourcing is positively associated with IEBP, while the relationship between IT outsourcing and IEBP is not statistically significant. We also find that IEBP have a significant influence on firm performance. Finally, the effect of IT sourcing mechanisms on IEBP and the effect of IEBP on firm performance are both moderated by the type of innovation related to IEBP. The results suggest that in order to improve their performance firms should consider IT an integral part of their strategic core and should be proactively involved in the internal development of IT resources. We conclude with managerial implications and directions for future research.     

ERP systems adoption: An exploratory study of the organizational factors and impacts of ERP success

We examined the relationships between the success of ERP system adoption, extent of business process improvement (BPI), and organizational performance and investigated the associations between the outcomes of these initiatives and such organizational factors as strategic intent, senior management support, and the status of the IT function within a company. A correlation analysis of 96 firms was made to test our hypothesis that the strategic intent to use ERP was closely related to the success of BPI, ERP, and organizational performance. The results also demonstrated that CEO-IT distance may have little direct bearing on the outcomes of ERP and BPI initiatives. A closer CEO-IT reporting relationship, however, was found to be associated with higher levels of senior management support for both types of enterprise projects. This empirical evidence reinforced the long-held assumption that organization-level benefits, BPI, and ERP success were closely related; and that these relationships were subject to the influence of the organizational variables.     

Big data and smart cities: a public sector organizational learning perspective

Public sector organizations (city authorities) have begun to explore ways to exploit big data to provide smarter solutions for cities. The way organizations learn to use new forms of technology has been widely researched. However, many public sector organisations have found themselves in new territory in trying to deploy and integrate this new form of technology (big data) to another fast moving and relatively new concept (smart city). This paper is a cross-sectional scoping study—from two UK smart city initiatives—on the learning processes experienced by elite (top management) stakeholders in the advent and adoption of these two novel concepts. The findings are an experiential narrative account on learning to exploit big data to address issues by developing solutions through smart city initiatives. The findings revealed a set of moves in relation to the exploration and exploitation of big data through smart city initiatives: (a) knowledge finding; (b) knowledge reframing; (c) inter-organization collaborations and (d) ex-post evaluations. Even though this is a time-sensitive scoping study it gives an account on a current state-of-play on the use of big data in public sector organizations for creating smarter cities. This study has implications for practitioners in the smart city domain and contributes to academia by operationalizing and adapting Crossan et al’s (Acad Manag Rev 24(3): 522–537, 1999) 4I model on organizational learning.     

基于信息效用及效率的移动商务系统分析方法*

移动商务是无线技术与传统商务融合的复杂整体系统,利用无线信息技术改进商务活动的效用和效率是整体系统目标,信息的效用和效率是移动商务系统的关键要素。运用系统科学的功能和整体涌现性原理,将移动商务归结为一种包含空间效用、时间效率及信息化对象的三维框架。利用三维框架进行系统分析,易于避免单纯技术视角认识移动商务的局限,提高系统的实用性。     

Continuance usage of corporate SNS pages: A communicative ecology perspective

This study develops a research model that explains the continuance of corporate social network service (SNS) pages. In order to find antecedents that influence end users’ continuance intention, this study adopts communicative ecology theory from media and communication studies. Results indicate that the quality of social interaction is the most salient feature, as indicated by the fact that it has the highest impact on perceived usefulness and enjoyment. Moreover, content quality also increases both perceived usefulness and enjoyment, while SNS platform quality and service quality increase perceived usefulness only. In addition, perceived network size moderates the impact of social interaction quality on perceived enjoyment.     

Imaginal and emotional experiences in pleasure-oriented IT usage: A hedonic consumption perspective

Based on the marketing theory of hedonic consumption, this study examines the effects of six types of imaginal and emotional experiences on using pleasure-oriented IT. Associated hypotheses are tested using questionnaire responses from 443 online game players. The results provide strong support for the major hypotheses and indicate that the determinants of behavior may differ in using pleasure-oriented versus productivity-oriented IT. This paper contributes not only to the application of a marketing theory to IS research, but also to improved understanding of using pleasure-oriented IT and of why people use technologies that are not particularly useful from a productivity standpoint.     

An empirical investigation on organizational innovation and individual creativity

Innovation is one of the critical success factors for organizations. It is essential for business to understand the driving forces of innovation. This study investigates the impact of the following three factors on innovation: employee relationship, knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity. 167 samples of firm level data were collected to construct the measurements of innovation, intensity of employee relationship, employee diversity, quality of knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity. It is found that all of these factors have significant impacts on innovation. We further extend the investigation to individual creativity as a corresponding concept to organizational innovation. An employee social network was constructed at a size of 149 nodes. It is shown that the centrality of each employee in the social network has significant positive impact on individual creativity. With these results from investigating organizational innovation and individual creativity, this study empirically illustrates the importance of enhancing employee relationship, knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity.     

Managing emerging technology and organizational transformation: An acculturative analysis

From 1992 to 2005 Singapore National Library Board (NLB) successfully incorporated IT into its working procedures and customer service. The organization has adopted RFID and other technology applications; transformed its operating routines and provided access to millions of publications for its library users. A key issue in this transformation was how the organization managed its cultural change and took advantage of emerging technology. The success can be considered remarkable since, in the past, public libraries in Singapore have carried the stigma of traditional public sector organizations in tending to resist new technology. We examined the cultural changes resulting from introduction of IT in order to show how the Singapore National Library Board managed its employees’ adaptation to the new technology. A number of key factors emerged; these show how an organization can manage this type of cultural adaptation.