Essays on enterprise social media: moderation, shop floor integration and information system induced organizational change

The digital transformation increases the pressure on innovation capabilities and challenges organizations to adapt their business models. In order to cope with the increased competitiveness, organizations face two significant internal challenges: Enabling internal digital collaboration and knowledge sharing as well as information system-induced change. This dissertation will investigate seven related research questions divided in two main parts. The first part focuses on how an organization can foster digital knowledge exchanges and collaboration in global organizations. Enterprise social media has attracted the attention of organizations as a technology for social collaboration and knowledge sharing. The dissertation will investigate how organizations can moderate the employee discourse in such platforms from a novel organizational perspective and provide insights on how to increase the encouragement for employees to contribute and assure content quality. The developed framework will provide detailed moderation approaches. In addition, the risk of privacy concerns associated with organizational interference in the new digital collaboration technologies are evaluated. The second part of the dissertation shifts the focus to the shop floor environment, an area that has faced substantial digital advancements. Those advancements change the organizational role of the shop floor to a more knowledge work-oriented environment. Firstly, a state of research regarding technology acceptance and professional diversity is presented to create an enterprise social media job-characteristic framework. Further, a unique and longitudinal shop floor case study is investigated to derive organizational challenges for enterprise social media and potentials for empowerment. To validate the future shop floor environment needs use cases for the shop floor are derived and a user profile is established. The case study is extended by expert interviews to focus on conceptualizing organizational information systems-induced change. In this regard, the role of work practices, organizational and employee mindset and information system change are integrated into a holistic organizational change model that targets employee empowerment. This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of enterprise social media from an organizational management and shop floor perspective. It contributes to understanding new digital needs at the shop floor and the information systems-induced change journey towards digital employee empowerment

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

A conceptual framework of influences on a non-profit GLAM crowdsourcing initiative: A socio-technical perspective

Crowdsourcing theory and research is in its infancy and fragmented with little theoretical agreement. This paper presents a conceptual framework that provides a holistic view of key influences on a non-profit GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) crowdsourcing initiative through an interpretive analysis. Three key themes of influences emerged from the case analysis: motivation, relational mechanisms and technology; however they were found to be mutually entangled in practice. The conceptual framework acknowledges the role of both crowd participants and organisational stakeholders through recursive use and interaction over time, and the emergence of multiple configurations of influences on crowdsourcing initiatives while aligning motivations of the crowd with that of the crowdsourcing initiative (i.e. motive alignment). The framework developed in this study extends existing knowledge of the key influences on non-profit crowdsourcing in a GLAM context and clarifies and expands our understanding of this phenomenon from a socio-technical perspective

Sociable knowledge sharing online: Philosophy, patterns and intervention

Purpose – This paper seeks to outline a social epistemological and ethical warrant for engaging in knowledge exchange on the social web, and to emphasise sociocognitive and emotional factors behind motivation and credibility in communities supported by social software. An attempt is made to identify positive and negative patterns of interaction from this perspective and to argue for more positive intervention on the part of the information profession. Design/methodology/approach – The paper outlines social epistemological and related theory, cognitive and social drivers of behaviour and then draws together evidence to justify the definition of patterns that will be important to the project. Research limitations/implications – A programme of evaluating online knowledge exchange behaviour using a social epistemological framework is needed. In order to do this, methodological development coupling formal epistemological with interpretive techniques for examining belief formation are also necessary. Practical implications – Considerations for the design and deployment of knowledge platforms and for engagement with existing communities are outlined. Social implications – The ideas presented attempt to define an important role for the information profession within a new paradigm of participation and social interaction online. Originality/value – The connection between social epistemology theory and LIS has long been appreciated, but social epistemology is rarely applied to practice or to online social platforms and communities. © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limite

Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology: A Synthesis and the Road Ahead

The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is a little over a decade old and has been used extensively in information systems (IS) and other fields, as the large number of citations to the original paper that introduced the theory evidences. In this paper, we review and synthesize the IS literature on UTAUT from September 2003 until December 2014, perform a theoretical analysis of UTAUT and its extensions, and chart an agenda for research going forward. Based on Weber’s (2012) framework of theory evaluation, we examined UTAUT and its extensions along two sets of quality dimensions; namely, the parts of a theory and the theory as a whole. While our review identifies many merits to UTAUT, we also found that the progress related to this theory has hampered further theoretical development in research into technology acceptance and use. To chart an agenda for research that will enable significant future work, we analyze the theoretical contributions of UTAUT using Whetten’s (2009) notion of cross-context theorizing. Our analysis reveals several limitations that lead us to propose a multi-level framework that can serve as the theoretical foundation for future research. Specifically, this framework integrates the notion of research context and cross-context theorizing with the theory evaluation framework to: 1) synthesize the existing UTAUT extensions across both the dimensions and the levels of the research context and 2) highlight promising research directions. We conclude with recommendations for future UTAUT-related research using the proposed framework

Attitudes and Behaviors in Online Communities: Empirical Studies of the Effects of Social, Community, and Individual Characteristics

Online communities and communities of practice bring people together to promote and support shared goals and exchange information. Personal interactions are important to many of these communities and one of the important outcomes of personal interactions in online communities and communities of practice is user-generated content. The three essays in the current study examines behavior motivation in online communities and communities of practice to understand how Social and personal psychological factors, and user-generated influence attitudes, intentions and behaviors in online communities. The first essay addresses two research questions. First, how does Social capital influence exchange and combination behaviors in online communities of practice? Second, how does absorptive capacity moderate the impact of exchange and combination behaviors on individual and community performance outcomes? Using a sample of 187 participants recruited from online communities of practice, the results of this study support the hypothesized relations between Social capital, and exchange and combination behaviors. Additionally, the moderating role of absorptive capacity is also supported. The second essay draws on Social identity and personal motivation theories to examine the following research questions. First, how do Social identity, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivations influence knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors in online communities? Second, how do knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors affect satisfaction with a community? Third, how do extrinsic and intrinsic motivations moderate the outcomes of knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors? To answers these research questions, a sample of 152 participants were recruited from a number of online communities. The results of this study indicate that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are significant predictors of knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors in online communities, and these behaviors also have a positive impact on satisfaction. Only one of the dimensions of Social identity has a positive impact on knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors in online communities. Using the theoretical lenses of elaboration likelihood model and Social presence, this study investigates two research questions. First, how do Social presence, source credibility, and content quality influence attitudes and intentions towards online communities? Second, how does knowledge affect those relationships? The research questions are investigated in a 2X2X2 factorial experiment with random assignment of 256 participants to one of the eight online communities. The results support all the hypothesized direct effects; two of the three hypothesized mediated relationships are also supported. The result provides insights into attitude formation, informs research on online communities and user-generated content, and has implications on the management and support of online communities. The results from the three studies inform research on online communities by providing insights into behavior motivations and outcomes, and the role of user-generated content. The findings are discussed in detail, along with theoretical and practical implications, and directions for future research

A meta-analysis of the quantitative studies in continuance intention to use an information system

Franque, F. B., Oliveira, T., Tam, C., & Santini, F. D. O. (2021). A meta-analysis of the quantitative studies in continuance intention to use an information system. Internet Research, 31(1), 1-36. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-03-2019-0103Purpose: This study aims to describe, synthesise and clarify the findings of published studies on individual continuance intention to use an information system (IS), considering the fact that the number of studies in the continuance intention context are growing exponentially and cover several different subjects. Design/methodology/approach: The research uses meta- and weight analysis by taking 115 empirical studies from continuance intention to use an IS. The data are presented in different views using significant and non-significant relationships from all the studies. Furthermore, it uses hierarchical linear meta-analysis to analyse potential moderators that can influence continuance intention. Findings: The results reveal that affective commitment, attitude, satisfaction, hedonic value and flow are the best predictors of continuance intention to use an IS. Sample size, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation moderate the relationship of perceived usefulness on continuance intention. Power distance, masculinity and indulgence moderate relationship satisfaction on continuance intention. Practical implications: The results reveal that continuance intention to use an IS has been studied in different countries, with different cultures; therefore, IS providers should have diversified managing strategies, to ensure the satisfaction of users and long-term usage of their IS. Originality/value: The study provides a systematic overview of the most relevant variables used in the literature, including a temporal analysis of the theoretical models, highlighting the evolution of the constructs and presents a moderation analysis.authorsversionpublishe

Knowledge sharing and professional online communities acceptance : an integrated model

This study aims to advance empirical research in the realm of the use of professional online communities for knowledge sharing. Use of these communities is likely to be influenced not only by social factors but also by cognitive and technological factors. Hence, drawing upon theoretical and empirical foundations and contextually relevant previous research, three theoretical frameworks were developed and applied, in which relational factors (trust), individual factors (knowledge/system self-efficacy), and technological factors (system quality and content quality) were integrated together with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to examine the use of professional online communities to acquire/provide knowledge among professionals. To test these theoretical models, an online web-survey was administered to 366 members of eight professional communities in Egypt.Employing covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM), the results of this study confirmed that professional online communities have emerged as an essential channel to facilitate knowledge sharing among professionals. Performance expectancy and personal outcome expectancy were found to be the strongest determinants of professional online community use. Relational capital - trust - was found to be a significant predictor of usage behaviour. However, for members who used the community for knowledge provision, trust was found to have a stronger influence than was perceived trust on using the community for knowledge acquisition. For members who used the community for knowledge acquisition, effort expectancy and social influence revealed significant effect, in contrast to members who use the community for knowledge provision. Regarding the hypotheses common to both use behaviours, the findings demonstrated some significant differences. Content quality, for example, seemed to have a clearly stronger influence on trust than system quality in all models. Content quality showed stronger effect on trust for using professional online communities for knowledge provision than using for knowledge acquisition, while system quality was found to be a stronger predictor of trust in the use for knowledge acquisition. For effort expectancy, system quality tended to have a stronger influence than system self-efficacy in all models; however, the influence of system quality on effort expectancy tended to be more important when online communities are used for knowledge acquisition.As for moderating effects, the influence of performance expectancy on use for knowledge acquisition and the influence of personal outcome expectancy on use for knowledge provision were found to be moderated by users’ gender (stronger for men) and age (stronger for younger users), while the influence of performance expectancy on use for knowledge acquisition was found to be influenced by users’ experience (stronger for less experienced users)