Vishnu Vinekar

Can agile and traditional systems development approaches coexist? An ambidextrous view

Abstract Emerging evidence seems to indicate that most systems development organizations are attempting to utilize both agile and traditional approaches. This study aims to understand the reasons organizations feel the need for this unlikely juxtaposition and the organizational challenges in sustaining the opposing cultures. Drawing on the extensive literature in organizational theory and management, we advocate ambidexterity as a viable solution to systems development organizations attempting to harness the benefits of both agile and traditional development.

It Impacts in Information and Physical Product Industries

We utilize choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC), a novel methodological approach for IS decision-making research, to investigate the relative importance of the critical factors in the decision models of consumers when evaluating intention to use mobile office services. From a survey of working professionals, we extract the hierarchy of relative importance of each critical factor influencing the adoption decision. We found that moderate usefulness is the threshold that vendors should try to achieve and simple design does not differ significantly from the design with moderate complexity. The applicability of CBC analysis in IS research is established; guidelines and implications for IT designers, managers, and researchers are presented. Our findings enable practitioners to pursue practical questions such as: 1) which factors are consumers most concerned with when electing to adopt MO technology for professional communications? and 2) what is the tradeoff that consumers might make for accepting and adopting MO technology?

The resource-based view of it business value: Complementary investments or embedded knowledge?

This paper tests a primary postulate of the Resource-Based View (RBV) of Information Technology (IT) business value. From this perspective, IT is not rare but pervasive, and it is only the combination of investments with other resources that makes the investment inimitable. Therefore, the effect of IT on firm performance cannot be direct effects, but rather firm performance can only be affected when IT expenditures are combined with other investments. This study tests this theory using panel data of large firms spanning seven years. Firm-level data is gathered from Compustat and matched to Information Systems (IS) Budget data. The results do not support the RBV postulate that IT Expenditure cannot have direct competitive advantage but must be combined with expenditure on other assets to effect firm performance. Instead, the results support the opposing hypotheses: IT expenditure and capital expenditures have independent, direct effects on firm revenue as well as firm profit, even in the presence of the interaction variable. The results imply that IT investments may be a source of direct competitive advantage, unlike the postulate of the RBV theorists. This may be because an IT system has embedded knowledge and creates knowledge, making it rare and imperfectly imitable. Rather than investing in generic IT systems and trying to obtain uniqueness from investments in complementary resources, firms can try embedding firm-specific knowledge when designing or modifying their systems and using their systems to create knowledge. This is the first study to test the RBV postulate that value from IT comes only with the combination of IT investments and investments in other assets and not from direct effects. By disproving this postulate, this study opens the door to new hypotheses based on knowledge in and from IT systems.

An Information Systems Design Theory for Knowledge-Based Organizational Learning Systems

The field of information systems (IS) is divided into “design science,” which is more engineering oriented, and “natural science,” which is more management oriented. This paper believes that such a conflict is detrimental to the cause of research in IS, especially because both design and natural science have a wealth of knowledge to give to and to learn from each other, and a symbiotic relationship between the two research interests could tremendously increase the contribution of IS research as a whole. As an example, this paper uses theory from natural science to guide building and evaluating an artifact using design science. Specifically, I develop an information systems design theory to provide a prescriptive conceptual design of an organizational learning system using design science that addresses the shortcomings of on knowledge management systems and organizational learning systems identified in natural science research.