Shaila M. Miranda

IT Outsourcing Strategies: Universalistic, Contingency, and Configurational Explanations of Success

Focus on individual outsourcing decisions in IT research has often yielded contradictory findings and recommendations. To address these contradictions, we investigate a holistic, configurational approach with the prevailing universalistic or contingency perspectives in exploring the effects of IT outsourcing strategies on outsourcing success. Based on residual rights theory, we begin by identifying three dimensions of IT outsourcing strategies: degree of integration, allocation of control, and performance period. We then develop a model of fit-as-gestalt, drawing from literatures on strategy, governance, interorganizational relationships, and outsourcing.Next, based on data from 311 firms in South Korea, we test universalistic and contingency perspectives in explaining the relationship between IT outsourcing strategies and outsourcing success. We then identify three congruent patterns, or gestalts, of IT outsourcing strategies. We term these strategiesindependent, arms-length, andembedded strategies. To establish the predictive validity of these gestalts and the viability of a configurational perspective, we then explore the effects of these congruent gestalts vis-A -vis noncongruent patterns on three dimensions of outsourcing success:strategic competence,cost efficiency, andtechnology catalysis. We also contrast the effects of each of the three gestalts on each of the three dimensions of outsourcing success. Our findings indicate the superiority of the configurational approach over universalistic and contingency perspectives in explaining outsourcing success.

The Social Construction of Meaning: An Alternative Perspective on Information Sharing

Research on information sharing has viewed this activity as essential for informing groups on content relevant to a decision. We propose and examine an alternate function of information sharing, i.e., the social construction of meaning. To accomplish this goal, we turn to social construction, social presence, and task closure theories. Drawing from these theories, we hypothesize relationships among the meeting environment, breadth and depth of information shared during a meeting, and decision quality. We explore these relationships in terms of the effects of both the media environment in which the group is situated and the medium that group memberschoose to utilize for their communication.Our study of 32, 5- and 6-person groups supports our belief that interpretation underlies information sharing and is necessary for favorable decision outcomes. It also supports the proposed negative effect of low social presence media on interpretation in terms of depth of information sharing; a low social presence medium, however, promotes information sharing breadth. Finally, the findings indicate that when in multimedia environments and faced with a relatively complex task,choosing to utilize an electronic medium facilitates closure and, therefore, favorable outcomes.

Information acquisition in group decision making

This study focused on accessing information during group decision making across traditional face-to-face and group support systems (GSS) environments for two different types of tasks. It also explored the impact of varying access patterns on the quality of the group decisions in a laboratory experiment. Findings indicate that individuals in GSS groups accessed information significantly more often; however, access patterns varied across meeting conditions and tasks. Contrary to expectations, GSS groups accessed information later in the decision-making process, while traditional groups accessed it earlier. When working on a task with a best answer (i.e. an intellective task), groups sought information later. On a judgmental task (i.e. cognitive conflict task), groups tended to seek information earlier in the decision-making process. Finally, information accessed late in the decision-making process appeared detrimental to decision quality for the cognitive conflict task.

Stocks and flows underlying organizations' knowledge management capability: Synergistic versus contingent complementarities over time

What are the components of a knowledge management (KM) capability and how do they impact firm performance? Based on prior research, we modeled a firms KM capability in terms of its accumulations of stock - in the areas of human resources, technology infrastructures, and strategic templates - and regulation of flow, via institutionalization and internal and external learning processes. We then considered the extent to which these components complement one another in their impact on two types of firm performance - efficiency, based return on assets, and value creation, assessed as Tobins q (the ratio of the capital market value of the firm to the replacement value of its assets). We posited differential types of stock-flow complementarities across these two performance outcomes over time - stable, positive effects on firm efficiency, synergistic complementarity, and initially positive, but subsequently negative effects on value creation, contingent complementarity. Data gathered from 218 Korean firms supported this premise. Implications for practice in the evolving fields of organizational capability and complementarities were explored.

Are social media emancipatory or hegemonic? societal effects of mass media digitization in the case of the SOPA discourse

Mass media digitization is an unfolding phenomenon, posing novel societal opportunities and challenges that researchers are beginning to note. We build on and extend MIS research on process digitization and digital versus traditional communication media to study how and to what extent social media—one form of digital mass media—are emancipatory (i.e., permitting wide-spread participation in public discourse and surfacing of diverse perspectives) versus hegemonic (i.e., contributing to ideological control by a few). While a pressing concern to activists and scholars, systematic study of this issue has been elusive, owing partially to the complexity of the emancipation and hegemony concepts. Using a case study approach, we iteratively engaged with data on the discourse surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and source literature to identify six facets of interpretive media packages (i.e., competing social constructions of an issue) as measurable constructs pertinent to emancipation and hegemony. These facets included three structural constraints (on authorship, citation, and influence) and three content restrictions (on frames, signatures, and emotion). We investigated propositions regarding effects of social versus traditional media and lean versus rich social media on these interpretive media package facets by comparing the SOPA discourse across two lean traditional and social media (newspapers and Twitter) and two rich traditional and social media (television and YouTube). Our findings paradoxically revealed social media to be emancipatory with regard to structural constraints, but hegemonic with regard to an important content restriction (i.e., frames). Lean social media mitigated structural advantages and exacerbated content problems. These findings suggest that, as with traditional media, some inevitable evils accompany the societal benefits of social media and that mass media is having a detrimental effect on public discourse. We offer practical steps by which private and public institutions may counter this effect, theoretical implications for wider consideration of the six interpretive media package facets proposed here, and encouragement to MIS researchers to increase their efforts to compare different digitized processes so that a more comprehensive theory of the effects of different forms of digitized processes can be developed.

Innovation Diffusion and E-Collaboration: The Effects of Social Proximity on Social Information Processing

Organizational arrangements such as telework are often believed to disrupt workers’ social networks. This raises a concern regarding teleworkers’ abilities to adjust to technological changes in organizations. Based on innovation diffusion theory, this chapter considers telework and interdependence as parallel dimensions of social proximity that may be expected to affect the diffusion of innovation in terms of users’ social information processing (i.e., their technology beliefs, communication channels, and information sources). This proposition is investigated in a field-study conducted during the migration of a business unit to a new communications system. Technology users at the business unit were surveyed three times over a 12-week period—right before the conversion to the new system and at two six-week intervals following the conversion. These surveys assessed the impact of telework on respondents’ beliefs toward the communication technology. Findings partially supported our hypotheses regarding the negative effect of remoteness on beliefs about technology. Users were then surveyed to investigate the media and sources they utilized to stay informed about the new technology. As anticipated, telework was related to an increased use of electronic media and of individual and authority information sources. Contrary to our expectations, though, results indicated a positive effect of telework on the use of collective sources and face-to-face media. Therefore, we conclude that teleworkers make a special effort to preserve their social networks.

Enriching Views of Information Systems within Organizations: A Field Theory

Three perspectives have dominated research on IT adoption, implementation, use, and impacts: technological determinism, organizational imperatives, and the emergent perspective. While the last is most realistic in its assumptions, it falls short in two respects. First, structuration theory, which has served as the underpinning for most research based on this perspective, while acknowledging the potentially constraining effects of structure, presumes that all agency is equally unconstrained within a set of structures. Given this presumption, a second shortfall of the emergent perspective is that it fails to shed light on the systematic manner in which agency is constrained.