Saggi Nevo

IT Capability and Organizational Performance: The Roles of Business Process Agility and Environmental Factors

The business value of information technology (IT) has been one of the top concerns of both practitioners and scholars for decades. Numerous studies have documented the positive effects of IT capability on organizational performance but our knowledge of the processes through which such gains are achieved remains limited due to a lack of focus on the business environment. Such a linkage therefore remains the subject of debate in the information systems literature. In this study, we fill this gap by investigating the mediating role of business process agility and the moderating roles of environmental factors. On the basis of matched survey data obtained from 214 IT and business executives from manufacturing firms in China, our analyses show that even though firm-wide IT capability presents the characteristics of rarity, appropriability, non-reproducibility, and non-substitutability, its impact on organizational performance is fully mediated by business process agility. Our results also show that the impact of the environment is multifaceted and nuanced. In particular, environmental hostility weakens the effect of IT capability on business process agility, while environmental complexity strengthens it. The theoretical and practical implications of this study, and its limitations, are also discussed.

Organizational members’ use of social networking sites and job performance: An exploratory study

– There is considerable debate among academics and business practitioners on the value of the use of social networking by organizational members. Some, fearing presenteeism (i.e. being at the workplace but working below peak capacity), claim that the use of social networking sites by organizational members is a waste of time, while others believe it leads to improvements in job performance, partly due to employees’ successful efforts to balance work‐life realms. This paper aims to inform this debate by examining the use of social networking sites by organizational members and its effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance., – The exploratory study is based on a survey of 193 employees, focusing on the following constructs: social networking site use intensity, perceived job satisfaction, perceived organizational commitment, and job performance. The authors’ proposed model was evaluated using variance‐based structural equation modeling (SEM), a latent variable‐based multivariate technique enabling concurrent estimation of structural and measurement models under nonparametric assumptions. This study used WarpPLS 2.0 to assess both the measurement and the structural model., – The results show that social networking site use intensity has a significant positive effect on job performance through the mediation of job satisfaction, and that this mediating effect is itself mediated – in a nested way – via organizational commitment. The findings suggest that social networking site use, rather than causing presenteeism, may be a new way through which employees balance their work‐life realms, in turn benefitting their organizations.Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze, in an integrated way, the relationship between those theoretical constructs.

IT capabilities and product innovation performance

Despite a plethora of studies that demonstrate the positive impacts of information technology (IT) capabilities on innovation performance, our knowledge of the processes through which such gains are achieved and their susceptibility to environmental factors remains limited. This paper fills these gaps by examining the roles of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and competitive intensity at the firm level, thereby contributing to research on IT business value. Using data from manufacturing firms in China, we find that CE fully mediates the effect of IT capabilities on product innovation performance and that competitive intensity moderates the proposed relationships.

Improving strategic flexibility with information technologies: insights for firm performance in an emerging economy

As the business environment becomes more turbulent, firms ponder how to become more flexible in reallocating or reconfiguring resources, processes, and strategies to respond more efficiently and effectively. In this context, the question of whether and how information technology (IT) can support strategic flexibility remains unresolved. This paper theorizes that firms that use IT to support core competencies will experience improved strategic flexibility, which may enhance their performance. It further theorizes that these effects are contingent on the form and nature of the firm’s IT infrastructure, as well as its type of ownership – state-owned or private. Using data from a matched survey of IT and business executives in 148 Chinese manufacturing firms, we reveal positive, significant links between IT support for core competencies and strategic flexibility, and between strategic flexibility and firm performance. The findings further show that the effect of IT support for core competencies on performance is partially mediated by strategic flexibility, and that IT infrastructure positively moderates the link between IT support for core competencies and strategic flexibility. We also demonstrate that state-owned firms are less likely to apply IT applications to collect and analyse market information and thus surrender opportunities for achieving strategic flexibility and stronger firm performance.

From Recreational Applications to Workplace Technologies: An Empirical Study of Cross-Context is Continuance in the Case of Virtual Worlds

Although three-dimensional, immersive virtual worlds, such as Active Worlds, Second Life, and Teleplace have been in existence for several years, their organizational use is rather limited. This paper posits, perhaps counter intuitively, that the diffusion of virtual worlds within organizations could be enhanced by their recreational usage. This argument is motivated by the notion developed in this paper that the use of technologies need not remain within a single context, but instead can cross-contexts, for example from recreational to vocational. We term such shift cross-context IS continuance. This paper proposes that workers using virtual worlds for recreational (i.e., hedonic and social) use are suitably positioned to discover those technologies’ workplace applicability, thereby assisting in their diffusion within the organization. Building on the supporting results of an empirical study, this paper recommends that managers consider allowing for ‘playtime’ with virtual worlds as a mechanism for enhancing their adoption and subsequent diffusion in the workplace. From an information systems (IS)-research perspective, this paper makes several important contributions. First, it contributes to the IS continuance literature by arguing for, and providing evidence in support of, the existence of cross-context continuance. To date, this literature stream has examined only one aspect of continuance – for example, within-context. Second, this paper identifies recreational and work as distinct dimensions of technology usage, and hedonic and social usage as sub-dimensions of the former, thereby contributing to the contextualization of this core IS construct. Third, it is one of the early field studies dedicated to the empirical examination of virtual worlds.

Enhancing the Performance of Software Development Virtual Teams through the Use of Agile Methods: A Pilot Study

This paper develops a conceptual model that explicates the role of synchronous communication media in enabling - directly and indirectly, via social presence - virtual software development teams to adopt and apply Agile methods. In turn, Agile methods, as well as perceived social presence, are theorized to have a positive impact on communication convergence and transactive memory. Ultimately, these outcomes are formulated as direct antecedents of virtual team performance. A pilot study of 40 Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) teams provides preliminary supporting evidence for the conceptual model.

An empirical study of IT as a factor of production: The case of Net-enabled IT assets

A great deal of research in the information systems field has focused on the link between IT and firm-level outputs, like productivity and performance. This paper critically examines the economic assumptions and methodological approaches that underlie much of this work. Three important issues and gaps are identified. First, the functional form of the relationship between IT and firm-level outputs has been inconsistently specified, or overlooked. Second, multiple input and output variables are often arbitrarily combined. Third, the characteristics of IT as a factor of production have not been tested in the era of Net-enabled IT assets. This paper sheds light on these issues by analyzing an appropriate dataset in a two-stage process. In the first stage, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed in order to derive a meaningful measure for IT productivity from a compilation of input and output variables. This measure is treated as a dependent variable in a multivariate regression analysis during the second stage. The paper confirms the diminishing marginal productivity and input substitutability of IT for the sub-category of Net-enabled IT assets.

The interaction effect of IT assets and IT management on firm performance

IT assets, IT management, and business environment interact as a system.IT management interacts with environmental dynamism to positively impact firm performance.IT assets interacts with IT management to positively impact firm performance.Environmental dynamism positively moderates the interaction effect of IT assets and IT management on firm performance. The multifaceted role of information technology (IT) in organizations has been extensively examined. However, the interaction between IT assets and IT management and its impact on firm performance remains less clear. In this paper, we adopt a systems perspective to further examine this important mechanism. In particular, we investigate how IT assets and IT management, as key subsystems within the larger organization system, interact to jointly impact organizational performance. Building on systems theorys notion of open systems, we also examine how the organization and its sub-systems are impacted by the environment in which it is located. Specifically, we investigate how environmental dynamism permeates the boundaries of the organization to moderate the interaction between the IT assets and IT management subsystems. A matched-sample of 214 business executives and IT managers is used for testing the hypotheses.

Dissatisfaction Does Not Mean Rejection: A Theory of Reinvention of Applicable Technologies by Mindful and Unfaithful Users

The prevailing view in IS research considers technology users as passive actors in the innovation diffusion process who face only two possible behaviors regarding the technology they receive - i.e., either use or nonuse. According to this view, individuals either accept the technology as it is presented to them or outright reject it. We contest this view and propose that a third behavior more accurately characterizes the landscape of post-adoption behaviors - that is, IT reinvention. We argue that reinvention is important for post-adoption IS research and propose a new theory. By tracing a path from IT dissatisfaction to technology reinvention, this paper makes several contributions to IS research and practice. First, it sheds lights on a complex phenomenon - that is, the consequences of IT dissatisfaction. Second, the paper informs managers on how to view IT dissatisfaction as a possible occasion for technology reinvention, with potentially positive outcomes.

Enhancing the Visualization of Big Data to Support Collaborative Decision-Making

This paper proposes the use of advanced data displays to promote the visualization of big data for supporting collaborative decision-making through enhanced synchronicity and team convergence. We review relevant literature and put forth propositions about the impact and interaction of task, data, and media attributes. We conclude by describing how the propositions can be empirically tested and highlighting the contributions of our work.