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We consider the processes of achieving alignment in coordinated inter-organizational networks through a case study of a system development project in ARC Transistance, a network of European automobile clubs that cooperate to provide pan-European service. The theoretical contribution of the paper is, first, an extended strategic alignment model for inter-organizational networks that distinguishes between integration of IS with business strategy and infrastructure, and what we label ‘accordance’ between the strategies and infrastructures of the network and the member firms. Second, we propose that for a network organization, network and member strategies might be complementary as well as tightly coupled. We similarly argue that IS architectures for networks should strive for being ‘business strategy-neutral’ to more easily accommodate the diversity of members. Finally, we discuss how the process of developing a network information system can be a driver towards network alignment, but how the lack of effective governance structures makes alignment harder to achieve.

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is discussed in academia and industry as a vehicle to guide IT implementations, alignment, compliance assessment, or technology management. Still, a lack of knowledge prevails about how EAM can be successfully used, and how positive impact can be realized from EAM. To determine these factors, we identify EAM success factors and measures through literature reviews and exploratory interviews and propose a theoretical model that explains key factors and measures of EAM success. We test our model with data collected from a cross-sectional survey of 133 EAM practitioners. The results confirm the existence of an impact of four distinct EAM success factors, ‘EAM product quality’, ‘EAM infrastructure quality’, ‘EAM service delivery quality’, and ‘EAM organizational anchoring’, and two important EAM success measures, ‘intentions to use EAM’ and ‘Organizational and Project Benefits’ in a confirmatory analysis of the model. We found the construct ‘EAM organizational anchoring’ to be a core focal concept that mediated the effect of success factors such as ‘EAM infrastructure quality’ and ‘EAM service quality’ on the success measures. We also found that ‘EAM satisfaction’ was irrelevant to determining or measuring success. We discuss implications for theory and EAM practice.

Multicommunicating (MC) represents a form of multitasking in which employees such as IS analysts and managers engage in multiple conversations at the same time (e.g., by sending texts while on a telephone call). MC can occur either during group meetings or during one-on-one conversations: the present paper focuses on the latter, termed dyadic MC. MC is increasingly prevalent in the workplace and is often useful in today’s business world, for example by making it possible to respond in a timely manner to urgent communications. Nonetheless, the efficacy of MC behaviors can also be questioned as they have been found to negatively affect performance and workplace relationships, as well as causing stress. During our investigations of this phenomenon, we often heard IS practitioners say ‘So what? I do this all the time, it’s no problem!’ which suggests that certain misconceptions regarding MC behaviors may be prevalent. Arising from research findings in multiple disciplines, we examine four such practitioner beliefs regarding MC behaviors: MC makes employees more accessible, it enhances productivity, it is required in most jobs, and rudeness is not an issue when MC. Further, we suggest recommendations to IS employees and managers so that they can better manage MC.

In the online environment, audio and instant messaging (IM) media are quite commonly used by people to communicate with each other and make offers as they negotiate. While we know much about how IM and audio differ, we know very little about how offers that are favorable to the recipient (termed unilateral concessions) are affected by what and how people communicate over these media. The purpose of this study is twofold – (1) to examine how such concessions are influenced by communication that is either neutral, or positive, or negative in affect; and (2) to determine how the use of IM, relative to the use of audio, influences the effects of these types of communication on unilateral concessions. We develop a research model based on prosocial theory, which suggests that negotiators using audio are predisposed to interpret their partners’ motivations and behaviors in a positive (prosocial) light while negotiators using IM are predisposed to interpret their partners’ motivations and behaviors in a negative (competitive) light. We manipulate the use of IM and audio in anexperiment designed to test predictions based on this theory. Our work provides theoretical and empirical support for the idea that communications other than concessions (such as positive, neutral, and negative affect) can lead to more or less self-sacrifice depending on the medium employed, and thereby motivate negotiators to make greater or fewer unilateral concessions. Specifically, we found that (1) positive affect comments can increase unilateral concession independent of the medium used by negotiators; (2) neutral affect comments can increase unilateral concession when negotiators use audio, but have little impact when they use IM; and (3) negative affect comments can decrease unilateral concession when negotiators use audio, but can increase unilateral concession when they use IM. These results provide insights to researchers and practical guidance for negotiators.

Users are vital to the information security of organizations. In spite of technical safeguards, users make many critical security decisions. An example is users’ responses to security messages – di...

When implementing new information systems, organizations often face resistance behavior from employees who avoid or underutilize the system. We analyze the extent to which such user resistance beha...

This essay discusses the use of big data analytics (BDA) as a strategy of enquiry for advancing information systems (IS) research. In broad terms, we understand BDA as the statistical modelling of ...

Both Information Technology (IT) artifacts and design theories are important elements for knowledge capture in design science research in information systems. Building on a rich tradition of constructing and evaluating artifacts, recent design science research has made significant advances toward better understanding the explanatory aspect of design theory. Researchers have stressed the importance of mid-range theories that relate IT artifact features (causes) with measures and goals (effects). Against this background, design theorizing reveals certain commonalities with theorizing in the behavioral science field. In this paper, we explore differences and similarities between theorizing in these areas. We develop a framework that allows for a better understanding of the relationships between manifest design decisions, kernel theory constructs and their evaluation metrics. We identify common issues that arise from conceptual distances between these ideas and show their potential impact on both the design and evaluation of artifacts. The field of electronic feedback systems is used as an illustrative example.

Insiders represent a major threat to the security of an organization’s information resources. Previous research has explored the role of dispositional and situational factors in promoting compliant...

Measuring the success of eGovernment systems depends on how citizens perceive their value. Our understanding of success has been hampered however by (i) the rapid development and complexity of Inte...

Trust is considered as a critical enabler in reducing consumer concerns regarding e-commerce transactions. Another enabler that helps reduce consumers’ concerns is Web Assurance Seal Services (WASS). We suggest that both factors help in the reduction of a critical hindrance to e-commerce, namely consumer concerns, and foster e-commerce transactions. Prior research has focused on trust in e-commerce, and separately, on the effectiveness of WASS within certain nations or cultures. However, given that e-commerce is now a global phenomenon we contend that the national or cultural characteristics of consumers are important to understand. This comparative national research attempts to fill this gap. This study makes the following contributions: It identifies a hindrance (i.e., consumers’ concerns), and two enablers (i.e., effectiveness of WASS and trust) in e-commerce technologies as a shopping channel (i.e., trust in e-Channel). It proposes consumers’ concerns for e-commerce as a second-order three-dimensional construct (i.e., security, privacy, and business integrity concern) and compares the effects of trust in e-Channel and WASS on consumers’ e-commerce transaction intention in two different national/cultural contexts (i.e., the U.S.A. and South Korea). The results of the study indicate that the perceived effectiveness of WASS of the U.S. consumers has a strong positive impact on their transaction intention and has a strong negative influence on their concerns for e-commerce. In contrast, Korean consumers’ perceived effectiveness of WASS does not significantly influence their transaction intention and their concerns for e-commerce. The results of group comparison analysis confirm that the strength of perceived effectiveness of WASS of the U.S. consumers is significantly stronger than that of Korean consumers. Interpretations from a cross-national perspective, theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations are discussed.

German hospitals are required to comply with, and give due consideration to, the data protection laws and regulations that apply to their daily work. However, the data protection scandals that have...

The growing adoption of agile methods of system development can be seen as broadly consistent with characteristics of a management fashion. However, the extent that fashions relate to how specific organizations actually adopt and use agile remains unclear. Based on five case studies, this research seeks to apply the concepts from management fashion theory to understand how organizations mindfully (or mindlessly) adopt agile methods. We find in some cases that agile appears to be characterized as a short-term, transitory trend, while in others it is embedded in an organization’s processes and culture. We identify three categories that distinguish between fashion patterns during agile adoptions: Crusaders, who exclusively adopt agile in a pure form; Tailors, who integrate agile and traditional approaches to fit their specific circumstances; and Dabblers who employ a few ceremonial agile activities alongside a traditional approach. The results from this study can encourage managerial awareness of the link between fashions and agile development, which can serve to highlight the unique opportunities to enhance mindfulness and avoid the pitfalls of mindlessness. By uncovering insights into the fashion-centric drivers of agile adoption, this research extends past theory related to both mindful innovation and management fashions.

Information technology (IT) implementation continues to be a challenging process for many organizations. The challenge is heightened when systems are changed due to mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The recent focus on IT-service management highlights the importance of having positive relationships between IT-service providers and end-users. In an M&A situation, there is often little history, and thus limited basis for trust in the IT organization, yet systems often need to be changed in these situations. The current study examines the IT-service provider’s relationship with the end-user to ascertain the factors that influence that relationship and ultimately influence end-user attitudes toward the new system. We study a mandated implementation following an acquisition in the banking industry. The results highlight the important and fragile nature of trust in the IT-service provider. In addition, the results demonstrate that there are significant differences in what matters at what time during the implementation process.

This paper focuses on the process of maximizing the benefits from a business intelligence (BI) application. A general theoretical framework of analysis is formulated based on previous research into organizational deep structure and inertia. Our framework is applied to a case study of a U.K. retail bank which used an existing customer profitability BI application to transform its marketing strategy. We find that an organization’s ability to extract strategic BI benefits is influenced by its deep structure (core beliefs, organizational structures, control systems and distribution of power) and also by its ability to overcome the effects of the multiple inertia sources that the deep structure generates. Organizations should therefore carefully consider the effects of multidimensional organizational inertia and aim to manage inertia sources in respect to information from BI applications when links that embed the BI into an organization as a whole are developed and maintained. We also present generally applicable insights into enhancing the delivery of informative long-term BI decision support for organizations.

While the information systems (IS) community is increasingly international, it is reasonable to expect that different regions might display different research approaches, interests and publication ...

Information Technology (IT) is increasingly seen in policy and academic literature as key to the modernization of healthcare provision and to making healthcare patient-centred. However, the concept of Patient-Centred Care (PCC) and the role of IT in the transformation of healthcare are not straightforward. Their meanings need unpacking in order to reveal assumptions behind different visions and their implications for IT-enabled healthcare transformation. To this end, this paper analyses England’s health policy between 1989 and 2013 and reviews literature on PCC and IT. English policy has set out to transform healthcare from organization-centric to patient-centred and has placed IT as central to this process. This policy vision is based on contested conceptualizations of PCC. IT implementation is problematic and this is at least partly due to the underpinning goals and visions of healthcare policy. If this misalignment is not addressed then producing technologically superior systems, or better IT implementation strategies, is unlikely to result in widespread and substantial changes to the way healthcare is delivered and experienced. For IT to support a healthcare service that is truly patient-centred, patients’ needs and wants should be identified and designed into IT-enabled services rather than simply added on afterwards.

Champions are commonly suggested as a means of promoting the adoption of information systems. Since there are many different definitions of the concepts of champion and champion behaviour in the literature, practitioners and researchers may be confused about how to exactly use these concepts. A qualitative analysis of a single case study in a Swedish health-care organisation enabled us to explain how different champion behaviours relate to each other and how multiple champions interact. Combining our rich case observations with an analysis of champion literature reveals how champion behaviours form a coherent and meaningful whole in which networks of different types of champions at different levels in an organisation utilise their network of relations, their knowledge of the organisation and their insight into strategic decision-making politics to time and orchestrate the framing of innovations and the involvement of the right people. In conclusion, championing is a complex performance of contextually dependent collective social interaction, varying over time, rather than a heroic act of one individual promoting an idea. Future studies need to focus more on how the relations between different champions and their behaviours develop across innovations and over time, in order to develop a richer understanding of championing.

Privacy policy statements and privacy assurance cues are among the most important website features that online providers use to increase individuals’ trust and willingness to disclose private infor...

With this issue we conclude 2015 and are about to enter 2016, closing a quarter of a century, which has taken the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) out of the 20th century, in which th...

There has been growing interest in theory building in Information Systems (IS) research. We extend this literature by examining theory building perspectives. We define a perspective as a researcher’s choice of the types of concepts and relationships used to construct a theory, and we examine three perspectives – process, variance, and systems. We contribute by clarifying these perspectives and explaining how they can be used more flexibly in future research. We illustrate the value of this more flexible approach by showing how researchers can use different theoretical perspectives to critique and extend an existing theoretical model (in our case, the IS Success Model). Overall, we suggest a shift from the traditional process-variance dichotomy to a broader view defined by conceptual latitude (the types of concepts and relationships available) and conceptual fit (the types of concepts and relationships appropriate for a given study). We explain why this shift should help researchers as they engage in the knowledge generation process.

As firms increasingly engage in interorganizational information systems (IS) projects, including IS offshoring projects, the challenge for client firms of effectively exercising control across orga...

Standards have played an important but often unrecognized role in the development of modern organizations. This role is accentuated by today’s growth of large business and government infrastructure...

What critical factors contribute to knowledge workers’ effective information management and consequent job performance? This paper begins to address this important question by developing a conceptual definition of a new construct called personal information management effectiveness (PIME) and its constituent dimensions. Specifically, we theorize that PIME consists of two underlying dimensions: personal information management motivation (PIMM) and personal information management capability (PIMC). Synthesizing the extant literature on information management and information orientation, we further conceptualize PIMM as having four sub-dimensions of proactiveness, sharing, transparency, and formality, and PIMC as possessing five sub-dimensions of sensing, collecting, organizing, processing, and maintaining. Moreover, we develop a theoretical model that positions PIME as a mediator between two selected individual characteristics (IT self-efficacy and need-for-cognition) and job performance. New measures for PIME dimensions were developed and shown to have strong psychometric properties. The proposed model was empirically tested using data collected from 352 knowledge workers. As theorized, PIME was found to have significant effects on job performance (41%) and fully mediate the effects that the selected individual characteristics have on job performance. Responding to recent calls for advanced research on personal information management, the measures of PIMM and PIMC developed in this study have practical value as research and diagnostic tools and the findings provide useful insights to help organizations improve knowledge workers’ information management practices.

There is considerable research on how Decision Support Systems (DSSs) enable users to make better decisions. However, there is less focus on the possibility that some of their features may introduce biases and encourage suboptimal user behavior. We report on an experimental study that examines three DSS features that are generally considered beneficial to the user: the degree of choice the system provides to the user, the presence of competition among concurrent users, and the use of training to increase system familiarity. We hypothesize that the three DSS features may increase risky behavior (measured as the amount invested in a stock investment task with random outcomes) and overconfidence, conceptualized as the illusion of control, the phenomenon whereby people believe their chances of success at a task are greater than would be warranted by objective analysis. Our results confirm the effects of the three DSS features on risky behavior but only degree of choice impacts overconfidence. Moreover, overconfidence does not appear to mediate the impact of the DSS features on risky behavior. Finally, we hypothesize and confirm that, controlling for the effect of actual performance, overconfidence increases user satisfaction with the decision-making process and outcome.

This article discusses a key development in the use of grounded theory (GT) in information systems (IS) – the use of quantitative data in mixed studies to build on and elaborate theories. We examine the design of one of our research projects and describe how this mixed-design GT project helped elaborate emerging theories using slices of qualitative and quantitative data. Our contributions are threefold: (i) we show that the use of mixed data and techniques can be leveraged to help build credible theories in IS because it allows researchers to build theories of greater abstraction and scope: it helps sense-making in the drive from substantive to parsimonious formal theories; (ii) in line with classic GT, we propose a mixed typological design to help build a pathway to formal grounded theories in rupture with existing literature; and (iii) we highlight GT as a meta-theory of research design and revisit some of its main principles in a mixed-design perspective.

Top management has been concerned with IT-business strategic alignment (hereafter referred to as alignment) for the past 30 years. Consequently, alignment researchers have developed many mo...

Information technology (IT) is intricately bound up with time in teams. Yet a comprehensive review of what is known about time in IT-mediated teams is lacking. This paper addresses this gap. We classify time into three categories: conceptions of time, mapping activities to time, and actors relating to time. Drawing upon this framework, we review empirical information systems (IS) research on IT-mediated teams over the past three decades. Our review reveals that the research has approached time predominantly using the clock view and has examined exclusively how to map a single activity to the continuum of time. As a result, most studies operate within a simplified temporal context by conceiving time as an objective attribute that ticks away. Meanwhile, a void exists in research that recognizes time as interpretive and experienced. Our analyses also indicate that past research has been primarily interested in the differences between face-to-face and IT-mediated teams and the communication function of IT. Overall, IT remains roughly conceptualized, and research has produced fragmented insights that have small cumulative effects. To advance more substantive theory building, we propose several research directions that invite richer theorizing about how IT is related to time in teams.

As the number of messages and social relationships embedded in social networking sites (SNS) increases, the amount of social information demanding a reaction from individuals increases as well. We ...

This study presents a unified model of information technology (IT) continuance, by drawing upon three alternative influences that are presumed to shape continuance behavior: reasoned action...

Much research has been devoted to the early adoption and the continued and habituated use of information systems (IS). Nevertheless, less is known about quitting the use of IS by individuals, espec...

Understanding the adoption and use of technology is extremely important in the field of information systems. Not surprisingly, there are several conceptual models that attempt to explain how and wh...

In this study we examine the contingent effects of two cultural values, indulgence and individualism, on the relationships between perceived benefits (utilitarian value, hedonic value, and relation...

In Information Systems (IS) research on cross-cultural issues, cultural categories are typically introduced as analytical labels that explain why and how organizational groups in different parts of the world act and think differently. However, broad cultural categories can also be discursively mobilized by organizational members as strategic adaptive resources. Drawing on an ethnographic study of offshoring frame disputes (OFD) in an Indian subsidiary unit of a large Western information technology (IT) organization, this paper explores how members actively invoke a series of beliefs about Western culture and implicitly position them as the binary opposite of Eastern (or Indian) culture. The findings demonstrate how the mobilization of such beliefs eventually plays a vital role in the reconciliation of four different types of OFD. Drawing on this analysis, I build a social–psychological process model that explains how frame extensions trigger a cognitive reorganization process, leading to the accomplishment of OFD realignment. The paper argues that discursively invoked binary cultural categories help maintain non-confrontational definitions of situations and sustain working relationships in IT offshoring environments. Furthermore, interpretations linked to cultural notions seem to reflexively take the offshore–onshore power differentials into account.

This paper examines how culture affects requirements and their prioritization. We analyze the requirements of a mobile service, which were collected from Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Las Vegas. We argue that the current prioritization techniques for requirements do not sufficiently account for the cultural effects, nor does the literature offer information on ways of prioritizing such requirements according to users’ values. We see this as problematic because the literature suggests that culture should be viewed as a set of values. Our findings support the argument that we should use a value-based approach in prioritizing requirements. Furthermore, by focusing on the links between needs and values, we should be able to develop prioritization techniques not only for multicultural settings but also for information systems (IS) development projects that involve subcultures, such as adolescent users or members of specific organizations. Our findings show that this can be a powerful way of understanding the differences between various subcultures of IS users. In addition, we demonstrate how the laddering interviewing technique can be used to support this work. The proposed value-based requirements prioritization approach is also ready for industry applications and it is agnostic to the underlying IS development method used by developers.

In mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a primary objective of acquirer is to integrate IT resources of the target with its own. IT M&A integration is assumed to create synergies, which in turn increase shareholder wealth by making the value of the merged firm greater than the sum of the standalone values of the two firms. In this study, we challenge this assumption and argue that IT M&A integration does not always lead to greater value creation. Prior research on IT M&A integrations indicates that IT resources are often not scale-free in M&A: that is, they do not transfer easily and costlessly from an acquirer to its target or vice versa. In fact, IT M&A integration can destroy value rather than create it when IT resources are not scale-free. We theorize about the contingencies under which IT M&A integration can create value for shareholders of acquirers. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 549 M&A transactions between 1998 and 2007. We find that, on average, capital markets react negatively with M&...

In this paper, we present the notion of discovery paths stemming from our study of the M&A between Grupo Santander (GS) and Abbey (2004–2009), in which the resulting synergies after the merger were 35% better than expected. In fact, GS achieved a unique level of efficiency in 2012 in the banking industry, which we consider a sign of radical novelty. During the M&A, the GS management decided to apply its customer-centric model through the transfer of the information and communication technology (ICT) platform Partenon. This unusual decision led to the endogenisation of critical ICT functions to scale up this model to Abbey. In the paper, we argue that while some steps that lead to synergies can be planned in advance, other essential variations are only learned and discovered during the M&A process itself, thus leading to emergent synergies. In the model presented, a discovery path explains the firm’s evolution by sets of variations in the strategic interaction between the organisation and technology. These variations led to new design principles resulting from problem solving and modularity, which in turn led to (1) economies of scale and scope, (2) hybrid structures combining ICT and organisational knowledge domains that generate efficiency through fast integrations, and (3) organisational morphogenesis – that is, the creation of new organs such as ICT factories – which generates efficiency by avoiding diseconomies of scale by encapsulating the inherent complexity of technology and provides increasing returns.

With congeneric mergers, which involve firms with interrelated but not identical business lines that develop diverse products and services, a major challenge for organizations is the development of a common platform that fulfills similar business functions across multiple divisions. Through a field study of a post-merger common platform development initiative, we develop a framework that highlights how environmental and organizational contexts shape the process of common platform development (CPD). Our study provides an account of how the focal organization transitioned to a platform-based approach by achieving a balance between stable and flexible aspects of the common platform through negotiations among the divisions acquired through mergers and acquisitions. These negotiations were enabled through various boundary-spanning activities and the guided successive enrichment of boundary objects used in CPD process.

Do acquisitions lead to instrumental innovations related to the acquired knowledge? Past arguments on vertical integration espouse how a quest for knowledge drives acquisitions culminating in innovation performance. Using Google and Yahoo as cases-in-point, we examine how facets of acquired innovation knowledge impact post-innovation performance. In particular, the apparently opposing fortunes of Google and Yahoo allow us to investigate the pace of their innovation performance as a hazards model. Results from our investigation highlight Google’s ambidexterity over Yahoo with a swifter, systematic pace of innovation performance – from hastening time to patenting new ideas to the time to releasing new applications from acquisitions.

This paper studies Facebook users’ learning-based attitude formation and the relationship between member attitude and self-disclosure. Through the theoretical lens of learning theories, we recogniz...

This paper distinguishes and contrasts two design science research strategies in information systems. In the first strategy, a researcher constructs or builds an IT meta-artefact as a general solut...

As digital services increasingly deal with commodity offerings (i.e., digital content and features that are similar between service providers), service providers are seeking to differentiate themselves with variations in their digital service business models. Research, though, has yet to consider the association of consumer perceived value with digital service business models underlying technological innovations. We seek to demonstrate that consumer value for digital service business models may be quite different even when consumers have similar preferences for standard technology characteristics. In the context of this paper, we specifically consider consumer perceived value associated with Personal Health Records (PHRs) and PHR digital business models, through the use of an integrated latent variable and choice empirical model. We find that although consumer perceived value for PHRs is generally high, when offered a choice between three competing PHR business models, consumers state high value for only two of the business models in the choice set: PHRs offered directly by groups of medical providers and Integrated PHRs. These findings suggest that while perceived value may be high for generally considered digital services, variations in the underlying digital service business models are likely to have significant impacts on consumer valuations of digital services.

Leveraging the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) theoretical framework and past research on psychological climate, this study analyzes three antecedent factors driving an individual’s knowledge-sharing (KS) within organizations: knowledge-sharing psychological climate as motivation, information management capability as ability, and organizational information technology support as opportunity. An empirical examination reveals that a motivating psychological climate has a primary impact on KS behavior, and the impact of perceived information management capability on sharing is mediated by the psychological climate. Perceived organizational use of information technology to support knowledge work bears strong influence on information management capabilities but not on sharing, suggesting that investment in IT does have indirect payoffs. The study is the first to position the opportunity→ability→motivation causal network in an individual’s KS behavior. The findings suggest that managers need to consider the pre-requisite roles of IT-enabled opportunities and workers’ information management abilities when building an all-important motivating climate to share.

While there is a rich body of literature on information system (IS) innovations, there is a limited understanding of the role IS leaders’ individual factors and their appraisals of technological factors play in organizations’ adoption of IS innovations. We address these gaps in the IS literature by focusing on an IS process innovation – namely, computer-aided software engineering (CASE) – which is targeted at the core activities of systems development/maintenance in IS departments. We specifically examine how organizations’ CASE adoption decision is impacted by (1) two individual factors of IS leaders (i.e., leaders’ hierarchical position and job tenure) and (2) their perceptions of technological factors (i.e., relative advantage and technological complexity of CASE). Data were gathered from IS leaders at 350 organizations in the United States using a national cross-sectional survey. The findings suggest that IS leaders’ hierarchical position and their job tenure significantly differentiate CASE adopters from non-adopters. IS leaders at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy and with shorter job tenure made the adoption decisions in adopter organizations, while IS leaders at higher levels of the organizational hierarchy and with longer job tenure made the adoption decisions in non-adopter organizations. The findings also reveal that relative advantage has two dimensions – namely, perceived efficacy advantage and perceived efficiency advantage – and IS leaders’ evaluation of the perceived efficacy advantage of CASE differentiates adopters from non-adopters. The study has important implications for our theoretical and practical understanding of the factors related to IS leaders that are influential in the organizational adoption of IS innovations.

Online social networks (OSN) are technology-enabled relationship tools in which a user creates a profile, connects to other individuals, and shares user-generated content with them. One of the many features OSN offer is the ability to post messages in the form of product and service recommendations. Although word-of-mouth research has examined this type of personal communication to intentionally influence consumer decisions, limited understanding exists regarding when a user acts upon a recommendation received from one of their contacts. In this study, we draw on relationship theories and research on trust to analyze the impact relationship characteristics and behaviors of the OSN contacts have on trust in the recommendation that subsequently leads a user to act on this OSN contact’s recommendation. The results of a survey of 116 OSN users showed that closeness, excessive posting behavior, and past recommendation experience have a positive impact on trust and intention to act on the recommendation. One characteristic of the relationships, that is, similarity, however, does not affect recommendation trust in the context of OSN. The findings enhance our understanding of relationships and their defining characteristics in OSN. The results also provide insights into how companies might leverage OSN in their marketing efforts.

Despite significant research progress, alignment-related issues are among the top concerns of executives. Previous studies mostly focus on a company-wide strategic level of alignment; while this `top-down¿ view has benefits, it largely ignores the operational practices that help achieve alignment in IT projects as well as the impact that timing and complementarity of practices have on achieving alignment. In our research we apply four alignment practices ¿ communication, shared understanding, management commitment and IT investment evaluation ¿ to individual IT projects rather than at a company level; specifically, we look at the role of timing and complementarity for these alignment practices throughout different project phases. A detailed analysis of six IT projects carried out at three companies in the telecommunications industry reveals that IT projects creating higher business value employ all four alignment practices immediately from the start. No project was able to recover from failing to establish these four alignment practices in the first phase. While supporting the importance of complementarity of alignment practices, our findings also add the importance of the earliness of this complementarity.

This study offers an alternative interpretation to Banville and Landry’s (B&L, 1989) Can the Field of MIS Be Disciplined?, the canonical text that argued persuasively against the adoption of the Kuhnian view of scientific progress for the information systems (IS) field. Much has transpired in the quarter of a century since its publication, which provides us with new sources of understanding about paradigms and how they relate to the challenges faced by the IS field. On the basis of the hermeneutical principles of tradition, prejudice, temporal distance, history of effect and application, this study describes the context from which B&L was written, its dependence on Whitley’s (1984) The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences, and examines several of its claims and assertions. In contrast to B&L, this study finds the Kuhnian model of scientific progress well suited for a multidisciplinary and pluralistic field like IS and concludes with guidelines on how to reclaim the more transformative aspects of the paradigm concept, engender a culture of contextual borrowing from reference disciplines, and encourage conceptual development and autonomous theory construction.

Information systems have the potential to improve societal conditions in developing countries, and yet design theory to inform interventions to encourage uptake and use of these systems is sparse. This paper reports on an action design research project that addressed the problem of limited adoption of e-Government in Bangladesh. Inadequate knowledge of the nature of e-Government systems had been identified as an underlying cause of many other problems in this ‘wicked’ problem context. The project aimed to reduce knowledge deficiencies among key decision makers through activities that included the delivery of a custom-made training program and a handbook targeted at senior government officers. The project had modest resources and yet yielded significant outcomes. Critical reflection established a number of design principles for a ‘sweet spot change strategy’ for interventions of this type, with the most important principle being to first identify a ‘sweet spot’, a point of maximum leverage, and then to act on it.

Information technology (IT) allows members of the growing elderly population to remain independent longer. However, while technology becomes more and more pervasive, an age-related underutilisation...