SHIFTING STRUCTURES - A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ON PEOPLE ANALYTICS AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

The sudden decentralisation of work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic challenges institutionalised work practices, which some companies seek to counter by using people analytics. Narratives around people analytics often portray it as an enabler of remote workers’ (self-)organisation. Simultaneously, especially when deployed for performance management, people analytics is considered an enabler of workplace surveillance. Further, algorithmic biases in the systems can perpetuate social injustice and discrimination of marginalised groups, impacting established hierarchies and social structures in the workplace. Our study 1) provides an overview of the status of emerging themes around people analytics, remote working, and leadership, and 2) assesses the impact people analytics has on shifting structures in organisations. We guide our analysis by deploying and extending the Structurational Model of Technology. Our results suggest that people analytics poses vastly different challenges for employees and leaders, and that it can potentially contradict current trends towards flat hierarchies

Negotiating Agency and Control: Theorizing Human-Machine Communication from a Structurational Perspective

Intelligent technologies have the potential to transform organizations and organizing processes. In particular, they are unique from prior organizational technologies in that they reposition technology as agent rather than a tool or object of use. Scholars studying human-machine communication (HMC) have begun to theorize the dual role played by human and machine agency, but they have focused primarily on the individual level. Drawing on Structuration Theory (Giddens, 1984), we propose a theoretical framework to explain agency in HMC as a process involving the negotiation of control between human and machine agents. This article contributes to HMC scholarship by offering a framework and research agenda to guide future theory-building and research on the use of intelligent technologies in organizational contexts

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study.

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision‐making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e‐mail, teleconferencing combined with e‐Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media

Research Agenda for Studying Open Source II: View Through the Lens of Referent Discipline Theories

In a companion paper [Niederman et al., 2006] we presented a multi-level research agenda for studying information systems using open source software. This paper examines open source in terms of MIS and referent discipline theories that are the base needed for rigorous study of the research agenda

Emergent Cultural Contradictions from Overlapping Cultural Levels in Information Systems Development

Research exploring cultural influence on information system development (ISD) projects tends to focus on a single level of influence (e.g., organizational culture) or cultural incompatibility between one or two cultural levels that are assumed to be discretely separate and static (e.g., national and organizational culture). In contrast, our research conceptualizes culture as dynamic and emergent, with varying levels of overlapping cultures that occur simultaneously in ISD projects (e.g., organizational and occupational culture overlaps). The case study method is used to examine two strategic projects in a single organization in South Africa. The findings describe how the overlap of different cultural levels gives rise to cultural contradictions in ISD projects. Understanding the relevance of the multiple cultures that exist in ISD projects offers further opportunity for refining explanations of cultural contradictions. Cultural contradictions that emerge from cultural overlaps during ISD are conceptualized as five distinct types: Vision Contradictions, Priority Contradictions, Process Contradictions, Role Contradictions, and Technology Contradictions. Despite variation in the context of each project, there is similarity in the nature and effect of emergent cultural contradictions. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing cultural contradictions in, and influences on, ISD projects

Government Workspace Digitalization and Socioeconomic Development Outcomes in Ghana

The study sought to understand how the structurational environment shapes socioeconomic outcomes of government workspace digitalization in Ghana based on a qualitative, interpretive case study and the structurational model of technology as a theoretical lens. The findings show how the availability of electronic transactions law, government borrowing, and extendable system design can positively influence socioeconomic outcomes of government workspace digitalization. However, use of multiple system development environments, bureaucracy, a within-country digital divide, and a persistent physical signature and letterhead culture can negatively influence the socioeconomic development goals of government workspace digitalization

Upward influence tactics in virtual work settings

The globalization of work within organizations has generated a greater need for all type of workers to exert interpersonal influence through technology-mediated communication tools. This paper contributes to the analysis of interpersonal relations in virtual environments from a specific perspective: the choice of upward influence tactics. We propose that virtual work settings may impact the upward influence tactic selected, as well as the communication medium used to enact it. In particular, we study whether the types of upward influence strategies found in presence environments, are relevant in a virtual work context. This research also analyzes the link between communication media and influence tactics used. Preliminary results suggest that there is an influence tactic that is specific of virtual work relations, which may be called intermediation and consists of finding an intermediary that is well connected with the target and can help in defining the best approach by the agent

Technology adaptation and boundary management in bona fide virtual groups.

In this research project composed of multiple case studies, I focused on how bona fide virtual groups appropriated multiple media to facilitate group boundary construction and boundary management, which are preconditions of group identity formation. Specific topics explored in the study included how virtual groups socially constructed their group boundaries through recurring patterns of media use as well as other communication practices, how the group boundaries were preserved and blurred in both internal and external communication, and how bona fide groups managed dialectal tensions in interacting with external groups. To explore those research questions, I conducted four in-depth case studies of real life groups operating in natural contexts. Multiple qualitative methods of data collection were employed in the study and a modified grounded theory method was used in analyzing the collected data. As a result, the study found that the groups studied constructed group boundaries through communication practices such as making sense of common goals, negotiation of task jurisdiction with other interlocking groups, distinguishing patterns of ingroup interaction from those of outgroup interactions, and through developing group specific patterns and norms of media combination and media use. Group boundaries were preserved when the influence of outgroup members were constrained through media use, such as excluding them from team conference calls, filtering messages from external groups or members, and using boundary spanners to interact with external members. Group boundaries were blurred when intergroup communication impacted internal dynamics and when norms and practices were transferred from other contexts into a given group context. The study suggested that technology adaptation and boundary management occurred simultaneously. In addition, the groups experienced dialectical tensions in face of the permeability of group boundaries and developed communication tactics to deal with those tensions. Theoretical implications of the study were also discussed

Sounds Like a Misnomer? On the Role of Formal and Informal Leaders in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

Self-managing virtual teams are increasingly becoming common in the workplace. While the name self-managing virtual teams, by definition seem to suggest teams without any formal leaders, this is not the case. While some of the self-managing virtual teams have no leaders, many others may have internal or external formal leaders. However, most of the self-managing team research focuses on the leadership that is provided to these teams by external formal leaders. With this research-in-progress study, we aim at explicating the role of all leaders, formal or informal, external or internal. Our research questions are: (1) Which behaviors do individuals manifest to emerge as informal leaders in self-managing virtual teams? 2) In what capacity do formal and informal leaders contribute to goal accomplishment in self-managing virtual teams? We conduct this research through semi-structured qualitative interviews of key informants from self-managing virtual teams. Despite its abundance, traditional leadership research cannot be claimed to transfer directly to the leadership context of self-managing virtual teams. Unique conditions of these novel team environments require focused studies of leadership in virtual team settings. Thus, it is important to combine an inductive grounded theory approach with a deductive literature based approach. This combination allows for confirming which of the self-managing team leadership behaviors already exist in the literature, and identifying the leadership behaviors that do not apply to the SMV team setting, and eliciting behaviors that are only uniquely seen as leadership within the SMV team context. To this end, in this study, we use the research from traditional organizational leadership literature, self-managing team leadership literature and virtual team leadership literature as a way to categorize leader behaviors that are extracted from data based on inductive coding of the interviews. This paper presents the overall study, its motivations, a brief overview of relevant literature and the research methods. The results and the discussion will be provided during the conference