Framing Group Norms in Virtual Communities

Organizations have started to realize the economic value of virtual communities. Unfortunately, traditional management methods of control do not work on virtual communities. Often, group norms are the principal method of virtual community governance. However, it is not clear how group norms are formed in virtual communities, and how managers can shape norm evolution. This research in progress paper presents our initial analysis of norm formation in virtual communities. We use framing analysis on two virtual communities focused on recreational drug use to explain how managers of virtual communities construct, and community members interpret frames to develop group norms

Running to Stand Still: How Organizations Get Users to Willingly Participate in Maintenance Upgrades

Maintenance upgrades are projects to replace an existing version of packaged software with a later version to facilitate maintenance. Encouraging willing user participation in such projects is challenging, since users receive little benefit. Through a case analysis of maintenance upgrades using the lens of communicative framing, we discover that a negatively valenced frame is best for encouraging willing user participation. Such a frame focuses on the need to upgrade to ensure organizational survival. Users are informed that their participation is important, not to improve benefits, but to ensure the organization can maintain existing business operations. This frame means the focus of a maintenance upgrade differs from traditional enterprise implementation projects in that both change management and project championship are less critical. In a maintenance upgrade, techniques for encouraging willing user participation focus on maintaining the status quo, not organizational change

A Tutorial on Prototyping Internet of Things Devices and Systems: A Gentle Introduction to Technology that Shapes Our Lives

The Internet of Things, which has been quietly building and evolving over the past decade, now impacts many aspects of society, including homes, battlefields, and medical communities. Research in information systems, traditionally, has been concentrated on exploring the impacts of such technology, rather than how to actually create systems using it. Although research in design science could especially contribute to the Internet of Things, this type of research from the Information Systems community has been sparse. The most likely cause is the knowledge barriers to learning and understanding this kind of technology development. Recognizing the importance of the continued evolution of the Internet of Things, this paper provides a basic tutorial on how to construct Internet of Things prototypes. The paper is intended to educate Information Systems scholars on how to build their own Internet of Things so they can conduct technical research in this area and instruct their students on how to do the same

The Roles of IS Project Critical Success Factors: A Relevatory Case

Research in Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of Enterprise Systems (ES) projects has identified numerous practitioner governance mechanisms for ensuring project success. However, such research has not developed a theory of why certain critical success factors encourage project success. Our research develops such theory on a case study where even though the levels of several critical success factors were weak, the project nevertheless succeeded. Specifically, the logistics ES project succeeded even though there was (1) only marginal top management support, (2) low key user commitment, and (3) change management, training and other critical aspects of user management and communication were not well done. Using a modified dialectical lens, we highlight that project team legitimacy appears to be the underlying CSF, and many heretofore identified CSFs are really manifestations of project team legitimacy

Monetization for Content Generation and User Engagement on Social Media Platforms: Evidence from Paid Q&a

Social media platforms want to increase their valuation in terms of total content quantity and user engagement. Monetization is often used to induce user content generation. However, research documents that while monetization increases the quantity of specific kinds of content, it does not necessarily increase the total content quantity or user engagement (i.e., platform value). Furthermore, the impact of monetization may depend on the social status of content creators. This article investigates paid question and answer (paid Q&A). Based on expectancy theory and relevant research, this article hypothesizes the effects of introducing paid Q&A on both total content quantity and user engagement and on answerers of differing statuses. We test the model using data from a natural quasi-experiment of the introduction of paid Q&A to Weibo. The key insight of our study is that total platform value in terms of both total content quantity and user engagement rises with the presence of paid Q&A. Furthermore, we find that an answerer\u27s status negatively moderates the impact of introducing the paid Q&A feature on total content quantity but positively moderates its impact on user engagement. Our research provides insights into the causality of introducing the paid Q&A feature on platform value as well as the boundary condition of this relationship. Practically, paid Q&A is shown to be profitable to social media platforms and to increase the benefits to platform users

The Reinforcing Effects of Formal Control Enactment in Complex IT Projects

Complex IT projects pose particular challenges for the application of control, because of the dynamism and uncertainty involved. Prior studies suggest self-control can complement formal control within complex projects. However, how managers can enact controlee self-control remains an unsolved question. This paper proposes and investigates how enacted formal control unfolds during the course of an IT project and, in particular, how formal control enactment can promote or hinder controlee self-control. We demonstrate through case studies of a control in two wireless communication product development projects that an enabling control style can induce controlees to act to the benefit of both the controller and the controlee, while an authoritative control style encourages controlees’ self-interested behavior. We also show how controlees influence the enactment of control within complex projects and demonstrate the reinforcing effects of the controller’s enactment and controlee response on project outcomes. For practice, this research identifies preconditions necessary for inducing controlee self-control

How Do You Perpetuate IT-Enabled Change When Top Management Participation and Involvement Diminish?

Background: Research has demonstrated that sustained top management participation and involvement are important for IT-enabled change. However, this is not always possible. How IT-enabled change can succeed when top management participation and involvement diminish is an unsolved, but important research question. Method: We perform a 5-year exploratory longitudinal case study. Results: Our data is presented in two parts. We first present the contextual elements (goals, people, structures/processes, and artifacts) during the two years top management was actively participating and involved. For the three-year period where top management participation and involvement diminished, we present the contextual elements, and middle management’s enactment of traditional middle management roles (information broker, mediator, facilitator, change agent) on three kinds of threats to the change (deviations from change vision, emergent issues, involving new stakeholders). Conclusions: We find IT-enabled change can succeed when top management participation and involvement diminish if middle management engages in joint action, i.e., intentional collective activity where members consciously choose to coordinate to achieve a goal. We identify three kinds of joint action: Constraining, where actions of the group limit the ability of individual middle managers to deviate from shared goals, Enabling, whereby a group of middle managers adapt the project to changing circumstances, and Extending, where groups of middle managers engage with others not in their functional areas. Joint action emerges when top management embeds, in the project context, (1) key influential stakeholders who are involved in the change, (2) a common goal, (3) structures and processes that promote collective work, and (4) artifacts inscribed with the common goal and collective work. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol11/iss4/2

Artifacts, Actors, and Interactions in the Cross-Project Coordination Practices of Open-Source Communities

While there has been some research on coordination in FLOSS, such research has focused on coordination within a project or within a group. The area of cross-project coordination, where shared goals are tenuous or non-existent, has been under-researched. This paper explores the question of how multiple projects working on a single piece of existing software in the FLOSS environment can coordinate. Using the Ordering Systems lens, we examine this question via a cross-case analysis of four projects performed on the open source game Jagged Alliance 2 (JA2) in the forum Bear’s Pit. Our main findings are that: (1) Ongoing cross-project ordering systems are influenced by the materiality of development artifacts. (2) The emergent trajectory of cross-project ordering systems is influenced by affordances that emerge from the interaction between the goals and desires of the project team building the development artifact, and the materiality of the development artifact. (3) When two parties need to coordinate in the ordering system, all or almost all coordination effort can be borne by a single party. Furthermore, over time, emergent FLOSS projects bear more coordination effort than stable, mature projects

Leveraging Social Capital to Obtain Top Management Support in Complex, Cross-Functional IT Projects

Research argues that a major reason for IT project failure is the lack of top management support. However, obtaining top management support is often considered outside the IT project team’s control. In this paper, we investigate how IT project teams can obtain such support. We find that creating and mobilizing social capital through repeated interaction with top managers and their confidants helps a project obtain top management support. Also, a failure to use social capital to engage top management can cause a decrease in their support. We demonstrate these points through a natural experiment of the support of three division heads and their corresponding divisions in the implementation of an enterprise system. We demonstrate how and why top management support may be obtained by (1) building social capital and (2) mobilizing existing social capital—directly with top management or indirectly with individuals with influence on top management