Gregory S. Dawson

Information Asymmetry in Information Systems Consulting: Toward a Theory of Relationship Constraints

Opportunism, or self-interest seeking with guile, is often witnessed in human behavior, and it bedevils human interactions and relationships. Organizations expend considerable effort to reduce opportunism. Agency theory espouses formal contracts as effective constraints on opportunism; however, a consultants use of tacit knowledge subjects clients to information asymmetry that is not amenable to formal contracts. The principal-professional lens was developed to accommodate the presence of tacit knowledge, but it ignores formal contracts and, like agency theory, ignores the existence of principal opportunism. This examination of information systems (IS) consulting notes that when information asymmetry is present, both clients and consultants sometimes behave opportunistically. The level of information asymmetry, the type of knowledge, and the level of contract specificity in an IS consulting engagement determine the mixture of legal and social constraints that are efficacious. Based on these revelations and the inadequacy of other theories, a theoretical model of relationship constraints is developed to explain the interplay between signaling and screening, knowledge type, contract specificity, and the levels of information asymmetry in predicting adopted constraint mechanisms. For researchers, this new model offers a lens to study opportunism from a knowledge-based perspective, whereas for practitioners it offers the possibility of forestalling a decline in markets due to rampant opportunism.

Governing innovation in U.S. state government

Strong internal governance by the governor and legislature matter.Team approach to innovation is necessary.It is unmistakable that innovation leads to higher performance within government. In the public sector, the strategic quest for IT-based innovation often starts by hiring a successful private sector CIO and hoping his or her prior experience will transfer. However this often ignores the existence and influence of other entities and IT governance structures that form the innovation ecosystem. Applying the legal view of agency theory to the U.S. state innovation ecosystem and using a crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) approach, we investigate factors that are associated with public sector IT-based innovation. We find that CIO characteristics, structural oversight mechanisms, CIO relationships with authorities, and the state environment combine to form configurations that lead to both high and low performance.

Exploring IT-Enabled Public Sector Innovation in U.S. States

Scholars and practitioners often assume that the public sector mirrors the private sector and that it is possible to merely port strategies between domains. However, we highlight the substantial differences between the domains and explore how IT-enabled innovation shapes and is shaped within state government. Analyzing state-level IT governance data using crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we uncover that low state attainment is a catalyst for IT-enabled innovation. We uncover and differentiate several types of innovations and also find that successful innovation requires the collaboration of the legislature, governor and CIO.