Manju K. Ahuja

It road warriors: balancing work-family conflict, job autonomy, and work overload to mitigate turnover intentions

This study examines the antecedents of turnover intention among information technology road warriors. Road warriors are IT professionals who spend most of their workweek away from home at a client site. Building on Moores (2000) work on turnover intention, this article develops and tests a model that is context-specific to the road warrior situation. The model highlights the effects of work family conflict and job autonomy, factors especially applicable to the road warriors circumstances. Data were gathered from a company in the computer and software services industry. This study provides empirical evidence for the effects of work family conflict, perceived work overload, fairness of rewards, and job autonomy on organizational commitment and work exhaustion for road warriors. The results suggest that work family conflict is a key source of stress among IT road warriors because they have to juggle family and job duties as they work at distant client sites during the week. These findings suggest that the context of the IT worker matters to turnover intention, and that models that are adaptive to the work context will more effectively predict and explain turnover intention.

Women in the information technology profession: a literature review, synthesis and research agenda

Gender differences in IT careers appear to be affecting the competitiveness of companies globally. It is posited that given the current labor shortage in the IT industry, it has become more important than ever to reduce sources of leakage in the IT career paths of women. A model of barriers faced by women in the field of information technology is presented. Three distinct career stages of career choices, persistence and advancement are analyzed. At each stage, the effects of social and structural factors which may act as barriers are identified and discussed. Social factors include social expectations, work–family conflict and informal networks, while the structural factors are occupational culture, lack of role models and mentors, demographic composition and institutional structures. A proposed research agenda is offered. It is suggested that these social and structural factors as well as their interactions will result in turnover of women in IT.

Socialization in Virtual Groups

Virtual groups, that communicate and coordinate their activities using information technology, continue to become prevalent as an organizational form (Ahuja & Carley, 199 9). Research in this area, however, is still in its infancy. Specifically, extant research provides little insight into how new members are socialized into virtual groups using electronic communication. This paper examines the influence of member tenure on individual communication patterns in virtual groups. A content analysis of e-mail communication among members of the group during a 3-month period showed that in virtual groups, newcomers primarily exhibit an information seeking mode in their communication and established members exhibit an information providing mode. Interestingly, and contrary to expectations, newcomers did actively engage in discussions regarding cognitive information, perhaps helped by the comfort provided by a lean and faceless electronic communication medium. However, the limited anonymity provided by the electronic media did not translate into newcomers seeking normative and regulative information in explicit ways, implying a need for organizational mechanisms aimed at virtual member socialization.

Network Structure in Virtual Organizations

Virtual organizations that use email to communicate and coordinate their work toward a common goal are becoming ubiquitous. However, little is known about how these organizations work. Much prior research suggests that virtual organizations, for the most part because they use information technology to communicate, will be decentralized and non-hierarchical. This paper examines the behavior of one such organization. The analysis is based on a case study of the communication structure and content of communications among members of a virtual organization during a four-month period. We empirically measure the structure of a virtual organization and find evidence of hierarchy. The findings imply that the communication structure of a virtual organization may exhibit different properties on different dimensions of structure. We also examine the relationship among task routineness, organizational structure, and performance. Results indicate that the fit between structure and task routineness affects the perception of performance, but may not affect the actual performance of the organization. Thus, this virtual organization is similar to traditional organizations in some ways and dissimilar in other ways. It was similar to traditional organizations in so far as task-structure fit predicted perceived performance. However, it was dissimilar to traditional organizations in so far as fit did not predict objective performance. To the extent that the virtual organizations may be similar to traditional organizations, existing theories can be expanded to study the structure and perceived performance of virtual organizations. New theories may need to be developed to explain objective performance in virtual organizations.

An empirical investigation of online consumer purchasing behavior

This article is focused on examining the factors and relationships that influence the browsing and buying behavior of individuals when they shop online. Specifically, we are interested in individual buyers using business-to-consumer sites. We are also interested in examining shopping preferences based on various demographic categories that might exhibit distinct purchasing attitudes and behaviors for certain categories of products and services. We examine these behaviors in the context of both products and services. After a period of decline in recent months, online shopping is on the rise again. By some estimates, total U.S. spending on online sales increased to

Individual differences and relative advantage: the case of GSS

5.7 billion in December 2001 from

Countering the anchoring and adjustment bias with decision support systems

3.2 billion in June of 2001 [3, 5]. By these same estimates, the number of households shopping online increased to 18.7 million in December

Social influence and end-user training

Studies of the effect of individual differences on usage of information systems have yielded mixed results. This study examines the effect of individual differences on the perceived relative advantage (a concept akin to perceived usefulness) of using Group Support Systems (GSS) over traditional face-to-face meetings. Specifically, the current field study investigates the effect of oral and writing communication apprehension, computer anxiety, and personal innovativeness on perceptions of relative advantage of a GSS. Results provide empirical support for the relationships explored and explain about 40% of variance in relative advantage of a GSS meeting vis-a-vis a traditional face-to-face meeting.

Critical Team-Level Success Factors of Offshore Outsourced Projects: A Knowledge Integration Perspective

Abstract Psychologists have identified several limitations to, and biases in, human decision-making processes. One such bias is the anchoring and adjustment effect, which has been demonstrated to be robust both inside and outside the experimental laboratory. Some decision support systems (DSS) have been designed to lessen the effects of decision-making limitations with promising results. This study tested a DSS designed to mitigate the effects of the anchoring and adjustment bias. The results show that anchoring and adjustment remains robust within the context of automated decision support. Implications that follow these results are offered.

Information technology and the gender factor

axiom that user training is a key element in MIS success [3, 16]. Included among positive outcomes afforded by user training are improved user attitudes, behavior, and performance. Although the typical focus of training programs is their technical content, many practit ioners have demonstrated that social factors could be instrumental in the target system’s success or failure. Indeed, it is recommended that researchers examine how methods of training can enhance motivation to learn and use software [3, 16, 17]. Unfortunately, there is little or no literature that includes actual manipulation of such “soft” variables [16]. The study presented in this article provides such manipulation. More specifically, we wanted to discover the extent to which training outcomes such as attitudes, behavior, and performance are influenced by peers through informal, verbal, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication, rather than derived solely through direct experience or formal channels. This article reports on a deception experiment that employed confederates in three experimental groups.