This paper analyzes the pioneering work of eKutir, a social business in India that leverages an information and communication technology (ICT) platform to progressively build a self-sustaining ...ecosystem to address multiple facets of smallholder farmer poverty. The study reveals that eKutir’s ecosystem has evolved through five distinct phases, each expanding the number and type of actors engaged and the breadth of ICT-supported services provided. The evolution displays a distinct pattern where the five elements of the ecosystem progressively evolve and reinforce one another to create a system that is economically sustainable, scalable, and can accelerate transformative change. The study has important implications for the design of emergent ICT platforms, which can enable an ecosystem-based approach to address complex problems.
The notion of integration is central to the understanding of organizations in general as well as of contemporary phenomena such as e-commerce, virtual organizations, virtual teams, and enterprise ...resource planning (ERP) implementation. Yet, the concept of integration is ill-defined in the literature, and the impact of achieving high levels of integration is not well understood. The present paper addresses these issues. Drawing on the literature of several fields, this paper proposes the concept of organizational integration (OI), which is defined as the extent to which distinct and interdependent organizational components constitute a unified whole. Six types of OI are identified: two intraorganizational OI (internal-operational, internal-functional) and four interorganizational OI (external-operational-forward, external-operational-backward, external-operational-lateral, and external-functional). This paper then presents a model and develops 14 propositions to predict (1) the effort needed to implement different types of OI, (2) the impact different types of OI will have on organizational performance, and (3) how six factors (interdependence, barriers to OI, mechanisms for achieving OI, environmental turbulence, complexity reduction mechanisms, and organizational configurations) influence the relationship between OI types, implementation effort, and organizational performance. The OI framework and model are then used to develop 14 propositions for ERP implementation research and to explain the findings of recent research on integration.
Interruption of work by e-mail and other communication technologies has become widespread and ubiquitous. However, our understanding of how such interruptions influence individual performance is ...limited. This paper distinguishes between two types of e-mail interruptions (incongruent and congruent) and draws upon action regulation theory and the computer-mediated communication literature to examine their direct and indirect effects on individual performance. Two empirical studies of sales professionals were conducted spanning different time frames: a survey study with 365 respondents and a diary study with 212 respondents. The results were consistent across the two studies, showing a negative indirect effect of exposure to incongruent interruptions (interruptions containing information that is not relevant to primary activities) through subjective workload, and a positive indirect effect of exposure to congruent interruptions (interruptions containing information that is relevant to primary activities) through mindfulness. The results differed across the two studies in terms of whether the effects were fully or partially mediated, and we discuss these differences using meta-inferences. Technology capabilities used during interruption episodes also had significant effects: rehearsing (fine-tuning responses to incoming messages) and reprocessing (reexamining received messages) were positively related to mindfulness, parallel communication (engaging in multiple e-mail conversations simultaneously) and leaving messages in the inbox were positively related to subjective workload, and deleting messages was negatively related to subjective workload. This study contributes to research by providing insights on the different paths that link e-mail interruptions to individual performance and by examining the effects of using capabilities of the interrupting technology (IT artifact) during interruption episodes. It also complements the experimental tradition that focuses on isolated interruptions. By shifting the level of analysis from specific interruption events to overall exposure to interruptions over time and from the laboratory to the workplace, our study provides realism and ecological validity.
Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the ...persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete, and they magnify both the similarity and distinctiveness of occupations with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of “optimal distinctiveness” and “persistent extinction.” We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity, i.e., how they define who they are and what they do. We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity.
Much ado has been made regarding user acceptance of new information technologies. However, research has been primarily based on cognitive models and little attention has been given to emotions. This ...paper argues that emotions are important drivers of behaviors and examines how emotions experienced early in the emplementation of new IT applications relate to IT use. We develop a framework that classifies emotions into four distinct types: challenge, achievement, loss, and deterrence emotions. The direct and indirect relationships between four emotions (excitement, happiness, anger, and anxiety) and IT use were studied through a survey of 249 bank account managers. Our results indicate that excitement was positively related to IT use through task adaptation. Happiness was directly positively related to IT use and, surprisingly, was negatively associated with task adaptation, which is a facilitator of IT use. Anger was not related to IT use directly, but it was positively related to seeking social support, which in turn was positively related to IT use. Finally, anxiety was negatively related to IT use, both directly and indirectly through psychological distancing. Anxiety was also indirectly positively related to IT use through seeking social support, which countered the original negative effect of anxiety. Post hoc ANOVAs were conducted to compare IT usage of different groups of users experiencing similar emotions but relying on different adaptation behaviors. The paper shows that emotions felt by users early in the implementation of a new IT have important effects on IT use. As such, the paper provides a complementary perspective to understanding acceptance and antecedents of IT use. By showing the importance and complexity of the relationships between emotions and IT use, the paper calls for more research on the topic.
Information Systems research provides significant insight into how information technologies affect the strategic agility of firms. Most research to date has studied the responding element of agility ...at the expense of sensing. Further, extant research has mainly focused on how the sensing of formal and strong signals might influence agility. With the highly turbulent and fast-changing competitive landscape of the digital age, we argue for the need to expand the focus of this research to include examining how managers identify and make sense of weak signals, and how the sensing of weak signals influences digital-enabled strategic agility. Drawing on social network theory, this paper presents two streams of research and several research avenues that can stimulate and potentially guide research efforts on this topic.
Despite the growing importance of information technology (IT) interruptions for individual work, very little is known about their nature and consequences. This paper develops a taxonomy that ...classifies interruptions based on the relevance and structure of their content, and propositions that relate different interruption types to individual performance. A qualitative approach combining the use of log diaries of professional workers and semi‐structured interviews with product development workers provide a preliminary validation of the taxonomy and propositions and allow for the discovery of a continuum of interruption events that fall in‐between the extreme types in the taxonomy. The results show that some IT interruptions have positive effects on individual performance, whilst others have negative effects, or both. The taxonomy developed in the paper allows for a better understanding of the nature of different types of IT interruption and their consequences on individual work. By showing that different types of interruptions have different effects, the paper helps to explain and shed light on the inconsistent results of past research.
Current competitive environments necessitate that firms pursue electronic integration in parallel to agility. However, most research to date has examined integration and agility relatively ...independently and has overlooked the relationship between them. Using coordination theory, this paper suggests that integration enables the two capabilities of agility (i.e., sensing and responding). Results from a study of 303 business unit operations of manufacturing organizations show that integration within business units and with outside partners is positively associated with process coupling of the value chain, both internally and externally. Further, both types of integration are positively associated with knowledge flow within and outside the business unit. In turn, both lead to higher capability to sense change in the business environment and respond to it with agility. This research helps us understand the integration-agility relation better by investigating the role of the knowledge and process capabilities.
Strategic information technology alignment remains a top priority for business and IT executives. Yet with a recent rise in environmental volatility, firms are asking how to be more agile in ...identifying and responding to market-based threats and opportunities. Whether alignment helps or hurts agility is an unresolved issue. This paper presents a variety of arguments from the literature that alternately predict a positive or negative relationship between alignment and agility. This relationship is then tested using a model in which agility mediates the link between alignment and firm performance under varying conditions of IT infrastructure flexibility and environmental volatility. Using data from a matched survey of IT and business executives in 241 firms, we uncover a positive and significant link between alignment and agility and between agility and firm performance. We also show that the effect of alignment on performance is fully mediated by agility, that environmental volatility positively moderates the link between agility and firm performance, and that agility has a greater impact on firm performance in more volatile markets. While IT infrastructure flexibility does not moderate the link between alignment and agility, except in a volatile environment, we reveal that IT infrastructure flexibility has a positive and significant main effect on agility. In fact, the effect of IT infrastructure flexibility on agility is as strong as the effect of alignment on agility. This research extends and integrates the literature on strategic IT alignment and organizational agility at a time when both alignment and agility are recognized as critical and concurrent organizational goals.
The paper distinguishes two different types of innovative behaviors involving information technology (IT): innovative IT use (IU) and innovating with IT (IwIT). While the former focuses on changing ...the technology and the work process to better support one’s existing work goals, the latter focuses on using IT to develop new work-related goals and outcomes. Drawing on Parker’s theory of proactive behavior, this paper compares the motivational antecedents and consequences of these two innovative behaviors enabled by IT. Our model hypothesizes that three generic types of motivation differentially affect IwIT versus IU. The paper also explores the moderating role of slack resources on the effect of motivation on the two innovative behaviors. Data from a survey of 427 IT users from North American companies show that social motivation affects IwIT (but not IU); intrinsic motivation is positively related to IU (but not IwIT); and internalized extrinsic motivation affects both IU and IwIT. Further, the results indicate that the moderating role of slack resources on different motivational paths is not a one-size-fits-all effect, that is, slack in IS resources only moderates the relationship between intrinsic motivation and IwIT. We also differentiated the consequences of IwIT from IU. The post hoc analysis shows that IwIT is significantly related to individual mindfulness at work, but IU is not. The paper contributes to IS research by offering a rich conceptualization of IwIT and examining its motivational antecedents and consequences in comparison to IU.
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