Innovating Mindfully with Service-Oriented Grids - The Role of Organizational Mindfulness in Turbulent Environments

Environmental turbulence as being illustrated by the current international financial crisis leads to a high degree of uncertainty in decision-making processes. However, even in conventional economic cycles, demanding decision processes are exposed to varying levels of environmental turbulence and institutional pressure. Consistent with the extant literature, organizational mindfulness as cognitive pattern is supposed to attenuate arising uncertainty and error in the IS assimilation process. So far, little empirical research has been conducted to quantify the impact of organizational mindfulness on the IS assimilation and business value generation process in industry. Grounded in the technology-organization-environment framework this research approach contributes to the diffusion of innovations and IS assimilation theory by validating the role of organizational mindfulness in interacting with institutional pressure against the background of environmental turbulence. The planned crosscountry (North America, Europe) questionnaire-based field study aims at IS decision makers among the 3000 largest financial services providers worldwide allowing for cross-country comparisons

Innovating Mindfully with OpenTable: A Restaurant’s Experience

Whether, when, and how do small firms innovate with IT? To address this question, we apply the concept of mindful innovation to a case study of a small independent restaurant that adopted, implemented, and used OpenTable, an online reservation system. Combining first-hand experience, interviews, and observation, we present a live adventure this restaurant undertook with OpenTable, from making sense of the innovation, trying it out, implementing it, realizing the benefits and dealing with the limitations, all the way to abandoning it in the end. This restaurant\u27s innovation journey has allowed us to assess the applicability of the mindfulness concept, disambiguate the concept\u27s implications to small firms, and articulate the concept in a small-firm setting, advancing toward a theory of mindful innovation with IT for small firms

Turning Isomorphic IT Innovations into Unique Capabilities

Firms often innovate with IT due to institutional pressures, which can lead into rash decisions and drive firms to innovate IT similarly, e.g. mimicking the industry leaders. This drives firms to look alike and turn homogeneous. However, recent observations show that firms can actually become heterogeneous while innovating with IT under institutional pressures. We argue that firms can learn from the IT innovation process and they can turn these learnings into better use of the technology, which can ultimately lead to heterogeneous capabilities. Thus in other words we argue that firms can revive disappointing IT innovations due to institutional pressure and turn them into competitive advantages. This study uses case studies to further explore this nascent phenomenon

“Caveat Emptor”: Cultural Assumptions in Information Technology Innovation

“Caveat emptor” in Latin or “let buyer beware” is a maxim from early common law that proposes that the buyer is responsible for using sound judgment in the purchase of goods and services based on their intended context of use. Used analogously for “ let the innovator beware” the paper looks at information technology (IT) innovation, with its adaptororiented nature, and puts into question the prepackaged artifact’s use across diverse cultures. If widespread adoption of IT is to persist we have to address the cultural assumptions that permeates IT literature. The emerging discourses on culture and social construction highlight the need for the inclusion of alternative views on the conceptualization, construction and development of culture. Using the historical socio-constructivist perspective of activity theory, the paper presents three assumptions designed to act as a sensitizing device and complement existing literature on IT innovation by providing a foundation for context-differentiated reasoning

Motivating CIO Advice Networking to Improve Firm Performance

Prior research has examined factors that motivate executives in general to seek advice from external peers. The literature is silent however regarding what IT governance mechanisms motivate CIOs to mindfully seek advice in their external advice networks. Our research shows that simply applying the advice of the prior literature in the CIO and IT governance context can be counterproductive. We analyze data from a survey of 99 municipal corporations to show that an effective configuration of IT governance mechanisms fits and changes over time with the firm’s financial performance and state of IT enactment. The lessons learned are instructive for practitioners, while also highlighting the importance of attending to context in IT governance research

Dynamic Isomorphism: IT Adaptation of the Bandwagon Followers

Firms often mindlessly adopt IT due to institutional pressure, which often leads to hastened and irrational decisions. Institutional pressure is therefore often considered as a negative effect on IT adoption. That is because little literature investigates into the adaptation effect after IT adoption due to institutional pressure. We advocate that institutional pressure indeed has a catalyzing effect on IT adoption in general, but firms can still mindfully correct the hastened decisions into a competitive advantage over time. We call this phenomenon dynamic isomorphism, which describes the IT adaptation process after institutional pressure. We propose to investigate in dynamic isomorphism by the use of a cross-case analysis, as it can provide an in-depth explanation of the proposed phenomenon

Building a Contemplative IS Workforce through Promoting Mindfulness in IS Design–A Case Study

Incorporating mindfulness in the information systems (IS) development process is not new, but educating an IS workforce to promote the design for a contemplative user experience is. Building a contemplative IS workforce is critical for promoting contemplative societies as social interactions nowadays have been increasingly structured by IS infrastructures and capabilities. This research examines the definitions of mindfulness in IS literature and in Buddhism. It qualitatively studies the IS students’ learning outcome on mindfulness. Students in a Systems Analysis and Design course were exposed to mindfulness literature, asked to design websites for a contemplative community of practice, and challenged to exercise and reflect on mindfulness when designing for spiritual information services. A majority of the students have recognized the importance of mindfulness in IS design, suggested approaches of reaching system outcome of promoting mindful user experience, and reported the incorporation of mindfulness in their daily attitudes and behaviors

Mindlessly Following Partly Mindless Leaders the Case of RFID Implementations

This paper studies drivers for RFID (Radio Fre quency IDentification) adoption. The mindlessne ss/mindfulness theory is applied to the context of RFID implementation decisions. Several type s of mindless and mindful decision making dri vers are put forward. Hypotheses are tested usi ng a questionnaire that was answered by 122 Chinese companies. The data shows mixed sup port for the applicability of the mindlessness/mi -ndfulness theory. Companies which notice othe r companies adopt RFID technology are motiva ted to adopt the technology as well. Late RFID implementers seem to take decisions more mi ndlessly than early RFID implementers. Still, ea rly RFID implementers also take decisions min dlessly. Neither late implementers nor early imp lementers can be qualified as being fully mindl ess: both groups also take decisions mindfully