Knowledge that Transforms

As social roles and relationships become increasingly inseparable from people’s interactions with information technologies (ITs), new constructs representing this intertwinement are needed to expand understandings of human behavior. As part of that endeavor, this paper draws on structural symbolic interactionist identity theories to systematically develop a conceptual definition of one such construct, IT identity—defined as the extent to which an individual views use of an IT as integral to his or her sense of self—as a new form of identity. The construct is framed within a theoretical model. Our goal is to facilitate the establishment of IT identity as an important and relevant construct that can improve our understanding of a variety of phenomena. In doing so, this paper makes three contributions to the information systems (IS) literature. First, it delineates current understanding of IT as a medium, determinant, or consequent of identity. Second, it defines the conceptual domain and theme of IT identity, which is necessary for investigating the construct’s theoretical influence. Third, it demonstrates the utility of IT identity to a wide range of IS topics relating to how people express, maintain, and expand their self-concepts. In doing so, it offers potential directions and opportunities for IS researchers to incorporate this novel concept into IS research.

Because violations of information security (ISec) and privacy have become ubiquitous in both personal and work environments, academic attention to ISec and privacy has taken on paramount importance. Consequently, a key focus of ISec research has been discovering ways to motivate individuals to engage in more secure behaviors. Over time, the protection motivation theory (PMT) has become a leading theoretical foundation used in ISec research to help motivate individuals to change their security-related behaviors to protect themselves and their organizations. Our careful review of the foundation for PMT identified four opportunities for improving ISec PMT research. First, extant ISec studies do not use the full nomology of PMT constructs. Second, only one study uses fear-appeal manipulations, even though these are a core element of PMT. Third, virtually no ISec study models or measures fear. Fourth, whereas these studies have made excellent progress in predicting security intentions, none of them have addressed actual security behaviors. This article describes the theoretical foundation of these four opportunities for improvement. We tested the nomology of PMT, including manipulated fear appeals, in two different ISec contexts that model the modern theoretical treatment of PMT more closely than do extant ISec studies. The first data collection was a longitudinal study in the context of data backups. The second study was a short-term cross-sectional study in the context of anti-malware software. Our new model demonstrated better results and stronger fit than the existing models and confirms the efficacy of the four potential improvements we identified.

This paper resumes the discussion in information systems research on the use of partial least squares (PLS) path modeling and shows that the inconsistency of PLS path coefficient estimates in the case of reflective measurement can have adverse consequences for hypothesis testing. To remedy this, the study introduces a vital extension of PLS: consistent PLS (PLSc). PLSc provides a correction for estimates when PLS is applied to reflective constructs: The path coefficients, inter-construct correlations, and indicator loadings become consistent. The outcome of a Monte Carlo simulation reveals that the bias of PLSc parameter estimates is comparable to that of covariance-based structural equation modeling. Moreover, the outcome shows that PLSc has advantages when using non-normally distributed data. We discuss the implications for IS research and provide guidelines for choosing among structural equation modeling techniques.

Top online reviewers who reliably gain consumers’ attention stand to make significant financial gains and monetize the amount of attention and reputation they have earned. This study explores how online reviewers strategically choose the right product to review and the right rating to post so that they can gain attention and enhance reputation. Using book reviews from Amazon and Barnes & Noble (BN), we find that reviewers on Amazon, where a reviewer ranking system quantifies reviewers’ online reputations, are sensitive to the competition among existing reviews and thus tend to avoid crowded review segments. However, on BN, which does not include such a ranking mechanism, reviewers do not respond to the competition effect. In addition, reviewers on Amazon post more differentiated ratings compared with reviewers on BN since the competition for attention on Amazon is more intense than on BN. Overall, reviewers on Amazon behave more strategically than reviewers on BN. This study yields important managerial implications for companies to improve their design of online review systems and enhance their understanding of reviewers’ strategic behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of critical research for information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) studies. Most previous IS research on ICT4D projects is interpretive and has focused on the immediate organizational context, but there are very few critical studies that have engaged in macro sociopolitical analyses regarding institutional change. Hence we extend previous IS research on ICT4D by adopting a critical research perspective on the macro sociopolitical context within which most ICT4D projects take place. We illustrate this with an ethnographic study of a project that was intended to improve the education and social welfare of the aboriginal people in Taiwan. On the surface the project was tremendously successful; it became a showcase on national radio and TV showing how ICT could be used to support underprivileged children. However, our research uncovered a different story altogether—a story of the aboriginal people themselves feeling marginalized and without much of a voice. We use concepts from postcolonial theory to make sense of these two contradictory stories. We found that the interrelationship between the macro sociopolitical context and the local organizational context of the ICT4D project is the key to understanding what went wrong, something which we would not have discovered if we had taken the traditional approach. The postcolonial context is powerful and pervasive, hampering any real progress.

Firms are increasing their investments in collaboration technologies in order to leverage the intellectual resources embedded in their employees. Research on post-adoption use of technology suggests that the true gains from such investments are realized when users explore various system features and attempt to incorporate them into their work practices. However, the literature has been silent about how to promote such behavior when individuals are embedded in team settings, where members’ actions are interdependent. This research develops a multilevel model that theorizes the cross-level influence of team empowerment on individual exploration of collaboration technology. Further, it identifies two cognitions—intention to continue exploring and expectation to continue exploring—that are oriented toward exploring ways to incorporate implemented technology into daily work routines over time. A 12-month field study of 212 employees in 48 organizational work teams was conducted to test the multilevel research model. The results provide support for the hypotheses, with team empowerment having a positive cross-level influence on intention to continue exploring and expectation to continue exploring and these, in turn, mediating the cross-level influence of team empowerment on individual exploration of collaboration technology.

The digital divide is usually conceptualized through goods-dominant logic, where bridging the divide entails providing digital goods to disadvantaged segments of the population. This is expected to enhance their digital capabilities and thus to have a positive influence on the digital outcomes (or services) experienced. In contrast, this study is anchored in an alternative service-dominant logic and posits that viewing the divide from a service perspective might be better suited to the context of developing countries, where there is a huge divide across societal segments in accessing basic services such as healthcare and education. This research views the prevailing differences in the level of services consumed by different population segments (service divide) as the key issue to be addressed by innovative digital tools in developing countries. The study posits that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be leveraged to bridge the service divide to enhance the capabilities of service-disadvantaged segments of society. But such service delivery requires an innovative assembly of ICT as well as non-ICT resources. Building on concepts from service-dominant logic and service science, this paper aims to understand how such service innovation efforts can be orchestrated. Specifically, adopting a process view, two Indian enterprises that have developed sustainable telemedicine healthcare service delivery models for the rural population in India are examined. The study traces the configurations of three interactional resources—knowledge, technology, and institutions—through which value-creating user-centric objectives of increasing geographical access and reducing cost are achieved. The theoretical contributions are largely associated with unearthing and understanding how the three interactional resources were orchestrated for service-centric value creation in different combinative patterns as resource exploitation, resource combination, and value reinforcement. The analysis also reveals the three distinct stages of service innovation evolution (idea and launch, infancy and early growth, and late growth and expansion), with a distinct shift in the dominant resource for each stage. Through an inductive process, the study also identifies four key enablers for successfully implementing these ICT-enabled service innovations: obsessive customer empathy, belief in the transformational power of ICT, continuous recursive learning, and efficient network orchestration.

In this article, we offer a broadened view of service innovation—one grounded in service-dominant logic—that transcends the tangible–intangible and producer–consumer divides that have plagued extant research in this area. Such a broadened conceptualization of service innovation emphasizes (1) innovation as a collaborative process occurring in an actor-to-actor (A2A) network, (2) service as the application of specialized competences for the benefit of another actor or the self and as the basis of all exchange, (3) the generativity unleashed by increasing resource liquefaction and resource density, and (4) resource integration as the fundamental way to innovate. Building on these core themes, we offer a tripartite framework of service innovation: (1) service ecosystems, as emergent A2A structures actors create and recreate through their effectual actions and which offer an organizing logic for the actors to exchange service and cocreate value; (2) service platforms, which enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of service exchange by liquefying resources and increasing resource density (facilitating easy access to appropriate resource bundles) and thereby serve as the venue for innovation; and (3) value cocreation, which views value as cocreated by the service offer(er) and the service beneficiary (e.g., customer) through resource integration and indicate the need for mechanisms to support the underlying roles and processes. In discussing these components, we consider the role of information technology—both as an operand resource and as an operant resource—and then examine the implications for research and practice in digitally enabled service innovation.

Previous research has proposed different types for and contingency factors affecting information technology governance. Yet, in spite of this valuable work, it is still unclear through what mechanisms IT governance affects organizational performance. We make a detailed argument for the mediation of strategic alignment in this process. Strategic alignment remains a top priority for business and IT executives, but theory-based empirical research on the relative importance of the factors affecting strategic alignment is still lagging. By consolidating strategic alignment and IT governance models, this research proposes a nomological model showing how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms. Our research model draws upon the resource-based view of the firm and provides guidance on how strategic alignment can mediate the effectiveness of IT governance on organizational performance. As such, it contributes to the knowledge bases of both alignment and IT governance literatures. Using dyadic data collected from 131 Taiwanese companies (cross-validated with archival data from 72 firms), we uncover a positive, significant, and impactful linkage between IT governance mechanisms and strategic alignment and, further, between strategic alignment and organizational performance. We also show that the effect of IT governance mechanisms on organizational performance is fully mediated by strategic alignment. Besides making contributions to construct and measure items in this domain, this research contributes to the theory base by integrating and extending the literature on IT governance and strategic alignment, both of which have long been recognized as critical for achieving organizational goals.