Reconciling the Debate on People Analytics in Academia and Practice

People analytics depicts the algorithmization of human resources management characterized by the data-driven automation and support of people-related processes or tasks. On the one hand, people analytics promises productivity increases through optimizing workforce planning, hiring, or talent development. On the other hand, the extensive data collection and analysis of employees’ behaviors can be perceived as invasive, raising privacy concerns. This debate cannot only be explained by diverging norms and values, for example, practitioners realizing commercial opportunities while being criticized by academic commentaries. Instead, an alternative explanation suggests that the opposing views can be reconciled by diving into the conceptual differences regarding what analytical methods and data sources people analytics entails. Hence, this paper proposes the conceptions of operational and strategic people analytics based on a literature review of academics’ and practitioners’ literature. Four propositions about these conceptions’ privacy and performance implications are derived. Future research should empirically validate these propositions

Media Choice in the Digital Era: A Replication Study Using Digital Traces

In recent years, the use of communication and collaboration media tools has increased manifold due to a rise in spatially distributed work. Which media tools individuals choose for their communication activities has been a research question of lasting interest. Established research focused on traditional media, for example, face-to-face, phone, or email. Moving the focus from traditional media towards digital tools requires rethinking previous findings. It is unclear whether the factors influencing digital tools’ choice changed or stayed the same. This paper replicates if the traditional hypothesized relationships and constructs of media choice still hold in the digital era. In response to a surge in interest, digital traces—activity logs from routine technology use—are analyzed for conceptual replication. The conceptual replication revises the boundary conditions of established media choice theory and shows that the supervisor remains a positive influence, whereas physical location becomes negligible, and the coworkers’ influence is inconclusive

Identifying Temporal Rhythms using Email Traces

In the past, work was governed by the natural rhythms of the physical world, but organizations increasingly distribute their work along the temporal dimension. This leads to varying temporal rhythms, which depict recurring patterns of activity in time, among workers, enabled by communication and collaboration technologies. The routine use of technology generates activity log data called digital traces, which promise an opportunity for a data-driven inquiry into temporal rhythms. While research using digital traces is scarce, various vendors claim to identify daily working hours based on email traces. Our study explores the use of email traces for an inquiry into daily and weekly temporal rhythms by triangulating quantitative results with interviews. Contrary to the vendors’ claims, our results show that the usefulness of email traces is limited to identifying aggregated and stable temporal rhythms

Investigating Personalized Price Discrimination of Textile-, Electronics- and General Stores in German Online Retail

Developers of pricing strategies in e-commerce businesses see a wide range of opportunities for deploying online price discrimination techniques given their ability to track consumers’ online identity and behavior. In theory, an increasing use of personal data enables organizations to show every single consumer their own personalized price, which is determined by the consumer’s characteristics, e.g. age, gender, surfing history, or location. This paper aims to explore the existence of online price discrimination activities within the German ecommerce market using a three-method approach. First, inquiring the online retailers via email and investigating their public documents; second, surveying students; and third, using a software crawler to simulate surfing activity. Our results do not provide any evidence of individualized price discrimination, which, we argue, is due to economic and political reasons, not technical reasons

The future of working from home:a mixed-methods study with IT professionals to learn from enforced working from home

Purpose: Positive experiences with working from home (WFH) during the Corona pandemic (COVID-19) have motivated many employees to continue WFH after the pandemic. However, factors influencing employees' WFH intentions against the backdrop of experiences during pandemic-induced enforced working from home (EWFH) are heterogeneous. This study investigates factors linked to information technology (IT) professionals' WFH intentions. Design/methodology/approach: This mixed-methods study with 92 IT professionals examines the effects of seven predictors for IT professionals' WFH intentions. The predictors are categorized according to the trichotomy of (1) characteristics of the worker, (2) characteristics of the workspace and (3) the work context. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the quantitative survey data. In addition, IT professionals' responses to six open questions in which they reflect on past experiences and envision future work are examined. Findings: Quantitative results suggest that characteristics of the worker, such as segmentation preference, are influencing WFH intentions stronger than characteristics of the workspace or the work context. Furthermore, perceived productivity during EWFH and gender significantly predict WFH intentions. Contextualizing these quantitative insights, the qualitative data provides a rich yet heterogeneous list of factors why IT professionals prefer (not) to work from home. Practical implications: Reasons influencing WFH intentions vary due to individual preferences and constraints. Therefore, a differentiated organizational approach is recommended for designing future work arrangements. In addition, the findings suggest that team contracts to formalize working patterns, e.g. to agree on the needed number of physical meetings, can be helpful levers to reduce the complexity of future work that is most likely a mix of WFH and office arrangements. Originality/value: This study extends literature reflecting on COVID-19-induced changes, specifically the emerging debate about why employees want to continue WFH. It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to understand which factors influence IT professionals' WFH intentions and how they impact the design and implementation of future hybrid work arrangements.</p