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By embracing a perspective grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action, this paper investigates the mechanisms through which team climate affects individual improvisation. By relying on data from 134 individuals belonging to 25 artistic collectives, our paper shows that team innovative climate impacts individual improvisation by triggering individual proactive attitude and risk aversion attitude. Because our research spans across different levels of analysis, we developed a multilevel model for analyzing our hypotheses. Our study complements the results of previous research by asserting that improvisation is not an inherently individual phenomenon; rather, improvisation is also affected by the characteristics of the team in which individuals are embedded.

In this paper, we develop and test a framework of work-family frustration in live-in, dual-earlier couples in the context of COVID-19 which acts as a work-life shock event. We tested the model usin...

This book collects some of the best contributions to the 14th conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (ItAIS), which was held at the University of Milano-Bicocca, in Milano, on October the 6th and the 7th. ItAIS is an established forum for scholars, researchers and practitioners involved in the Information Systems (IS) field and akin scholarly disciplines where both Italian researchers and scholars from all over the world gather to present and discuss the most important trends in their domain of studies and applications. More precisely, this books collects the revised and extended version of the papers that were selected for their contribution to the more technological and IT-oriented side of the broader conference theme, which was: “Organizing for Digital Economy: societies, communities and individuals”. This main theme, which this book inflects along the IT dimension, acknowledges the opportunity, as well as the responsibility, of the researchers and practitioners involved in the IS community to conceive, develop and present technologies, in the broadest sense of this term (and hence including also infrastructures, platforms, classification schemas, organizational constructs, protocols, architectures, tools), to enable, support and foster the fluid organization of the socio-economic context in which organizations, communities and individuals work, act and interact.

One more time the online channel differs from the offline one. Our study on the product return strategies in the retail industry shows that even if more expensive for online retailers, product return policies are more generous and perceived as lenient by consumers. Our measures were collected in the Italian jeans retail industry, with a comparative study done on firms active on both channels and representing more than 50% of the overall industry sales. The impossibility to serve the customer at a distance and the need to strategically boost online sales are becoming a serious trap for online retailers.

The present study analyses individual learning in a computer-based simulation setting (business game). In particular, the study points out the importance of the team environment in stimulating individual states that may foster individual learning. By taking into account 402 individuals who participated in a computer-based simulation, we underscore that individual perception of integration climate fosters individual curiosity and decreases individual aggressiveness. Moreover, we outline that individual curiosity does have an impact on individual learning.

The paper investigates the role of individual proactivity and team characteristics in shaping individual improvisation in the context of artistic collective teams. We considered 134 individuals belonging to 25 teams and we developed a multilevel model for analyzing our hypotheses. Results show that both individual characteristic of proactivity as well as the team context affect the likelihood of improvising for individuals belonging to artistic collective teams. Our study corroborates the results outlined by previous research outlining that improvisation is not an inherently individual phenomenon; rather improvisation is also affected by the characteristic of the environment individuals are involved in

The paper investigates the role of individual proactivity and team characteristics in shaping individual improvisation in the context of artistic collective teams. We considered 134 individuals belonging to 25 teams and we developed a multilevel model for analyzing our hypotheses. Results show that both individual characteristic of proactivity as well as the team context affect the likelihood of improvising for individuals belonging to artistic collective teams. Our study corroborates the results outlined by previous research outlining that improvisation is not an inherently individual phenomenon; rather improvisation is also affected by the characteristic of the environment individuals are involved in

The notion of improvisation has recently emerged in managerial studies as a viable solution to flexibly dealing with unexpected occurrences in work environments. However, past research on team improvisation has overlooked the contingencies that allow teams to effectively improvise. Drawing upon demand-control theory, we investigate how empowering leadership and overload affect the improvisation-performance relationship in the context of 48 work teams. Our results suggest that empowering leadership positively moderates the relationship between improvisation and performance, while overload attenuates the same relationship. Moreover, we found a joint effect of overload and empowering leadership influencing the improvisation-performance link, such that improvisation is most positively related to performance when empowering leadership is high and overload is low. Conversely, we found that empowering leadership is particularly detrimental to the improvisation-performance relationship when team members perceive high degrees of overload. Our findings make important contributions to the extant team literature as well as to the emerging literature on team improvisation. We outline several significant insights for HR managers and team leaders who are responsible for supporting teams that face unexpected events in the work environment.

Organizations are increasingly moving toward a team-based structure for managing complex knowledge in new product development (NPD) projects. Such teams operate in an environment characterized by dynamic project requirements and emergent nonroutine issues, which can undermine their ability to achieve project objectives. Team improvisation�a collective, spontaneous, and creative action for identifying novel solutions to emergent problems�has been identified as a key team-situated response to unexpected challenges to NPD team effectiveness. Geographic dispersion is increasingly becoming a reality for NPD teams that find themselves needing to improvise solutions to emergent challenges while attempting to leverage the knowledge of team members who are physically distributed across various locations. However, very little is known about how teams' improvisational actions affect performance when such actions are executed in increasingly dispersed teams. To address this gap in the literature, this paper draws on the emerging literature on different forms and degrees of team dispersion to understand how team improvisation affects team performance in such teams. In particular this paper takes into account both the structural and psychological facets of dispersion by considering the physical distance between team members, the configuration of the team across different sites, as well as the team members' perception of being distant from their teammates. Responses from 299 team leaders and team members of 71 NPD projects in the software industry were used to analyze the relationship between team improvisation and team performance, as well as the moderating effect of the three different conceptualizations of team dispersion. Results of the study indicate that team improvisation has a positive influence on project team performance by allowing team members to respond to unexpected challenges through creative and timely action. However, increasing degrees of team member dispersion (both structural and psychological) attenuate this relationship by making it difficult to have timely access to other team members' knowledge and by limiting real-time interactions that may lead to the development of creative solutions. The results of this research offer guidance to managers about when to balance the desire to leverage expertise to cope with unexpected events. Moreover, the present paper provides directions for future research on improvisation and team dispersion. Future research is encouraged to investigate factors that may help highly dispersed teams to overcome the shortcomings of team dispersion in dealing with emergent events.

Team network structure has been shown to be an important determinant of both team and individual performance outcomes, yet few studies have investigated the relationship between team network structure and technology usage behaviors. Drawing from social network and technology use literature, we examine how the structure of a team's advice-seeking network affects individual use of a newly implemented information technology. We develop cross-level hypotheses related to the effects of the structure of mutually interconnected ties within the team (i.e., internal closure) as well as the structure of nonredundant ties outside the team boundaries (i.e., external bridging). The hypotheses are tested in a field study of 265 employees working in 44 teams in a large financial services institution. Results show that internal closure has a U-shaped effect on individual use such that individual usage of the system is higher when the number of internal advice-seeking ties within the team is low or high, suggesting that m...

The present research extends prior work on the relationship between users and technology by examining users' intention to explore a technology. Drawing on exploration and individual motivation theories, we developed and tested a model examining the effects of hedonic (i.e., personal innovativeness and cognitive absorption) and instrumental (i.e., performance expectancy and image enhancement) factors on individuals' intentions to explore a technology over time. Based on a study of 94 users exposed to a new technology, with measurements taken at two points in time, we found that both instrumental and hedonic factors affect individuals' intentions to explore, but their effects change over time such that as time goes by, the effect of personal innovativeness decreases and performance expectancy increases. In addition to our contributions and implications for research on technology acceptance, we present practical implications both for developers and managers, with a view toward helping the development and deployment of technologies that satisfy the evolution of users' needs over time.

Team-based forms of organizing have been hailed for enabling organizations to leverage the intellectual resources of their employees. The past several years have witnessed increasing demands on tea...