Conducting Multi-Level Research in Information Systems

Information systems research involves an exploration and understanding of the interplay between technologies and human actors who can be grouped in different ways, ranging from simple pairings of employee-manager (dyadic relationship) to complex global virtual teams (group) to societies. Though researchers sometimes identify the impact of technologies and accompanying socio-technical systems over several units of analysis, few researchers investigate their effects across multiple levels of analysis. Yet, IS phenomena, like other research domains, involve variables or constructs found at multiple levels. For example, in virtual team research, investigators often examine individuals’ perceptions and abilities and their impact on group level outcomes such as performance or cohesion. Similarly, in IT implementation research, individual resistance to a new system is often studied as affecting success or failure of the implementation for the organization as a whole. The workshop is highly interactive, allowing participants to evaluate how their own research can or should be conducted in a multilevel framework. The session begins with a discussion of what multilevel research is, presenting the characteristics of and methodological issues associated with multilevel research. The workshop then offers participants opportunities to explore how multilevel research can be included within their own research area, using guidelines for each of six phases of research development

Organizational Informal Structure Influence On Project Success: Social Capital Approach

Knowledge sharing and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among project team members are crucial for project success. The IS project team is a temporary organization and has to produce outcomes in a limited time. we investigate how internal and external social capital (SoC) influence knowledge sharing and OCB within a team and how OCB and knowledge sharing affect project success. We also analyze the relationships between the three social capital dimensions. Our investigation will be analyzed using multi-level approach, which can make up for shortcomings of single-level analysis. This research adds to the current body of knowledge by examining the facilitation of knowledge sharing in the organization through informal interaction and citizenship. A statistical testing has not been complete. We will explore both HLM6 and MPLUS for multiple structural equation modeling and introduce a comparative analysis of each set of results. We expect the results of the research can provide project managers with insights on how to encourage project team members to share their knowledge and build teamwork more efficiently