Information technology (IT) outsourcing success requires careful management of customer-supplier relationships. However, there are few published studies on the ongoing relationships, and most of these adopt a customer perspective, de-emphasizing suppliers. In this study, we look at both customer and supplier perspectives, by means of the psychological contract of customer and supplier project managers. We apply the concept of psychological contract to perceived mutual obligations, and to how such fulfillment of obligations can predict success. Our research questions are (1) What are the critical customer-supplier obligations in an IT outsourcing relationship? and (2) What is the impact of fulfilling these obligations on success? We use a sequential, qualitative-quantitative approach to develop and test our model. In the qualitative study, we probe the nature of customer-supplier obligations using in-depth interviews. Content analysis of interview transcripts show that both customers and suppliers identify six obligations that are critical to success. Customers perceive supplier obligations to be accurate project scoping, clear authority structures, taking charge, effective human capital management, effective knowledge transfer, and effective interorganizational teams. Suppliers perceive customer obligations as clear specifications, prompt payment, close project monitoring, dedicated project staffing, knowledge sharing, and project ownership. In the second quantitative study, we assess the impact of fulfilling these obligations on success through a field study of 370 managers. Results show that fulfilled obligations predict success over and above the effects of contract type, duration, and size.

Proper measurement is critical to the advancement of theory (Blalock 1979). Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) is rapidly becoming an important theoretical paradigm for comprehending the impacts of advanced information technologies (DeSanctis and Poole 1994). Intended as a complement to the faithfulness of appropriation scale developed by Chin et al. (1997), this research note describes the development of an instrument to capture the AST construct of consensus on appropriation. Consensus on appropriation (COA) is the extent to which group participants perceive that they have agreed on how to adopt and use a technology. While consensus on appropriation is an important component of AST, no scale is currently available to capture this construct. This research note develops a COA instrument in the context of electronic meeting systems use. Initial item development, statistical analyses, and validity assessment (convergent, discriminant, and nomological) are described here in detail. The contribution of this effort is twofold: First, a scale is provided for an important construct from AST. Second, this report serves as an example of rigorous scale development using structural equation modeling. Employing rigorous procedures in the development of instruments to capture AST constructs is critical if the sound theoretical base provided by AST is to be fully exploited in understanding phenomena related to the use of advanced information technologies.

A significant amount of information systems (IS) research involves hypothesizing and testing for interaction effects. Chin et al. (2003) completed an extensive experiment using Monte Carlo simulation that compared two different techniques for detecting and estimating such interaction effects: partial least squares (PLS) with a product indicator approach versus multiple regression with summated indicators. By varying the number of indicators for each construct and the sample size, they concluded that PLS using product indicators was better (at providing higher and presumably more accurate path estimates) than multiple regression using summated indicators. Although we view the Chin et al. (2003) study as an important step in using Monte Carlo analysis to investigate such issues, we believe their results give a misleading picture of the efficacy of the product indicator approach with PLS. By expanding the scope of the investigation to include statistical power, and by replicating and then extending their work, we reach a different conclusion—that although PLS with the product indicator approach provides higher point estimates of interaction paths, it also produces wider confidence intervals, and thus provides less statistical power than multiple regression. This disadvantage increases with the number of indicators and (up to a point) with sample size. We explore the possibility that these surprising results can be explained by capitalization on chance. Regardless of the explanation, our analysis leads us to recommend that if sample size or statistical significance is a concern, regression or PLS with product of the sums should be used instead of PLS with product indicators for testing interaction effects.

This paper investigates the persistence of managerial expectations in an IT outsourcing context where the traditional relationship between supervisor and subordinate changes to one of client-manager and contractor. A mixed-method approach was used, in which a qualitative methodology preceded a large-scale quantitative survey. Data were collected from 147 survivors of a government IT organization which had undergone IT outsourcing in the previous year. Findings show that role overload, the presence of strong ties between manager and contractor, and the lack of prior outsourcing experience increased the persistence of managerial expectations. In turn, persistence of expectations had a distinct influence on managerial perceptions of contractor performance.

Information systems strategic alignment—the fit between business strategic orientation and information systems (IS) strategic orientation—is an important concept. This study measured business strategic orientation, IS strategic orientation, and IS strategic alignment, and investigated their implications for perceived IS effectiveness and business performance. Analyses of data gathered in a mail survey of North American financial services and manufacturing firms indicated that 1) business strategic orientation, IS strategic orientation, and IS strategic alignment are modeled best by utilizing holistic, ‘systems’ approaches instead of dimension-specific, ‘bivariate’ approaches, 2) three generic IS strategic orientations can be detected, 3) user information satisfaction does not capture important strategic aspects of IS effectiveness, 4) IS strategic alignment is a better predictor of IS effectiveness than is strategic orientation, and 5) business strategic orientation, IS strategic alignment, and IS effectiveness have positive impacts on business performance.

Firms have made extensive use of interorganizational systems (IOSs) to share knowledge and pursue superior joint performance. Contemporary firms are using IOSs to collaborate widely across the value chain and in an ever-expanding geographic landscape. Thus, institutional distance, which is the difference between the firms’ respective institutional fields, has become a prominent challenge. In this study, we investigate the extent to which institutional distance affects IOS-enabled knowledge sharing and its impact on the joint performance of collaborating firms. We also explore the extent to which IOS adaptability could be a design solution for improving IOS-enabled knowledge sharing, given the challenge of institutional distance. Drawing on institutional theory, we propose that institutional distance, differentially influential via its normative, cognitive, and regulative aspects, not only reduces IOS-enabled knowledge sharing but also weakens the positive impact of such sharing on joint firm performance. Next, extending boundary object theory to the institutional context, we propose that IOS adaptability could be a solution to the challenge of institutional distance because it can directly strengthen IOS-enabled knowledge sharing as well as mitigate the negative effect of institutional distance on such sharing. Our hypotheses were tested through a field study that collected dyadic data from 141 distinct buyer/supplier channel relationships in 4 industries. The results from partial least squares modeling fully support our hypotheses with regard to cognitive distance, partially support those related to normative distance, but do not support those related to regulative distance. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory development and professional practice. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2016.0675 .

Extant research is equivocal about the organizational performance effects of customer relationship management (CRM) technology use, with some studies reporting positive effects and other studies reporting no effects at all. The present research effort posits that these mixed findings may potentially be explained by two factors: (1) CRM technology use may have different effects on different customers, and (2) different CRM tools may have different performance consequences. This study investigates this possibility by building on relationship marketing and management theory to propose and test a model of the customer- and firm-level consequences of the organizational use of CRM interaction support and customer prioritization tools. The results of data analysis of 295 customer firms nested within 10 provider firms reveal that firm use of CRM interaction support tools is positively related to customers' relationship perceptions, regardless of customer account size. In contrast, the data indicate that use of CRM prioritization tools appears to have positive effects on a firm's larger customers and negative effects on smaller customers. The results also suggest that when considered at an aggregate level, customer perceptions of the exchange relationship are predictive of organizational performance and that the association between these two variables is significant for larger customer accounts but insignificant for smaller accounts. Overall, the study's results help explain some of the inconsistent findings reported in the literature regarding the performance implications of CRM technology use and suggest that use of the technology may serve to enhance organizational performance, at least over the short term.

This research investigates information security management as an administrative innovation. Although a number of institutional theories deal with information systems (IS) innovation in organizations, most of these institutional-centered frameworks overlook external economic efficiency and internal organizational capability in the presence of pressures of institutional conformity. Using Korea as the institutional setting, our research model posits that economic-based consideration will moderate the institutional conformity pressure on information security adoption while organization capability will influence the institutional confirmation of information security assimilation. The model is empirically tested using two-stage survey data from a field study of 140 organizations in Korea. The results indicate that in addition to institutional influences, our six proposed economic-based and organizational capability moderating variables all have significant influences on the degree of the adoption and assimilation of information security management. We conclude with implications for research in the area of organizational theory and the information security management literature, and for practices regarding how managers can factor into their information security planning the key implementation variables discovered in this study. The robust setting of the study in Korean firms allows us to generalize the theory to a new context and across cultures.

In today's networked economy, ideas that challenge existing business models and paradigms are becoming more important. This study investigated how individual differences, groupware-based creativity techniques, and ideas from others influenced the type of ideas that individuals generated. While individual differences were important (in that some individuals were inherently more likely to generate ideas that followed the existing problem paradigm while others were more likely to generate paradigm-modifying ideas that attempted to change the problem paradigm), the exposure to paradigm-modifying ideas from others and the use of intuitive groupware-based creativity techniques rather than analytical groupware-based creativity techniques were found to increase the number of paradigm-modifying ideas produced.