USE AND PRODUCTIVITY IN PERSONAL COMPUTING: AN EMPIRICAL TEST

This paper provides some empirical evidence on the link between computer use and the efficiency and effectiveness of voluntary, direct users of personal computers. A survey of accounting professionals in the Internal Revenue Service (N = 1110) provides self-reported levels of use, efficiency and effectiveness, as well as data on training, management policy and user characteristics. A second survey of completed audits (N = 1851) provides an objective standard of comparison for the self-reported use and performance data. Although users believe the computer is faster for some tasks, it does not improve their overall efficiency. The divergence is accounted for in part by managerial policies that encourage use of the system for marginal tasks and in part by users choosing to use the tool for activities that could be done more quickly manually. Data on the association between use and effectiveness show that while users believe the computer makes them more effective, much of this perceived value is symbolic rather than substantive. Users benefit from a sense of professionalism and self-esteem, but it is not clear whether the organization as a whole benefits. The low association between use and productivity suggests that researchers should resist the temptation to regard use as a proxy for implementation success in the absence of actual productivity measures. Practitioners should be aware that policies which promote use may actually hurt productivity by encouraging users to apply technology to tasks where it is only marginally useful

Management Implications in Information Systems Research: The Untold Story

In this essay, we take a fresh look at the IS academic community’s enduring concern with the management implications of its research. We examine in particular what we call the “variables-centered” research paradigm, which focuses its attention on co-variance among independent and dependent variables. As the predominant research tradition in the field, the variables-centered paradigm ought to constitute a major platform from which our community can speak to issues of managerial interest. Unfortunately, the variables-centered paradigm appears to distance researchers from the organizational actors, such as managers, to whom they would give advice and counsel. Particularly disturbing is the systematic erasure of those very actors from the domain of inquiry. Erased, too, are their actions and means of acting. Thus, when it comes time to offer useful prescriptions for action, our community attempts to do so on the basis of research in which, ironically, neither actors nor action directly appear. We offer some recommendations that may help to rectify this problem and, thereby, enrich the capacity of variables-centered research to speak in an informative and useful way to issues of practice

Useful Descriptions of Organizational Processes: Collecting Data for the Process Handbook

This paper describes a data collection methodology for business process analysis. Unlike static objects, business processes are semi-repetitive sequences of events that are often widely distributed in time and space, with ambiguous boundaries. To redesign or even just describe a business process requires an approach that is sensitive to these aspects of the phenomena. The method described here is intended to generate semi-formal process representations suitable for inclusion in a "handbook" of organizational processes. Using basic techniques of ethnographic interviewing and observation, the method helps users map decomposition, specialization, and dependency relationships at an intermediate level of abstraction meaningful to participants. By connecting new process descriptions to an existing taxonomy of similar descriptions in the Handbook, this method helps build a common vocabulary for process description and analysis.

The effect of repertoire, routinization and enacted complexity: Explaining task performance through patterns of action

We use pattern mining tools from computer science to engage a classic problem in organizational theory: the relation between routinization and task performance. We develop and operationalize new measures of two key characteristics of organizational routines: repertoire and routinization. Repertoire refers to the number of recognizable patterns in a routine, and routinization refers to the fraction of observed actions that fit those patterns. We use these measures to develop a novel theory that predicts task performance based on the size of repertoire, the degree of routinization, and enacted complexity. We test this theory in two settings that differ in their programmability: crisis management and invoice management. We find that repertoire and routinization are important determinants of task performance in both settings, but with opposite effects. In both settings, however, the effect of repertoire and routinization is mediated by enacted complexity. This theoretical contribution is enabled by the methodological innovation of pattern mining, which allows us to treat routines as a collection of sequential patterns or paths. This innovation also allows us to clarify the relation of routinization and complexity, which are often confused because the terms routine and routinization connote simplicity. We demonstrate that routinization and enacted complexity are distinct constructs, conceptually and empirically. It is possible to have a high degree of routinization and complex enactments that vary each time a task is performed. This is because enacted complexity depends on the repertoire of patterns and how those patterns are combined to enact a task.publishedVersio

Services, Processes and Routines: Literature review and implications

Service management involves building new services by combining and recombining processes and routines. In this paper, we examine the ontological and epistemological perspectives that inform our understanding of the chunks of functionality that are being recombined. Based on a review of 367 influential articles, we identify two very different sets of assumptions about the nature of processes and routines. We discuss the implications of these divergent assumptions for service management

The Convergence of Business Process Management and Digital Innovation

Business process management is a prolific field of research and an area of strong industrial uptake with roots in both management science and information systems engineering. Traditionally, business process management has largely been utilized in an inward-looking way with the aim to improve operations, eliminate waste, and increase efficiency. Recent developments around digital innovation challenge conventional ideas of process reengineering with a strong emphasis on the external market and exploration. In this talk, we will discuss the complementarity of BPM and digital innovation

Building a complementary agenda for business process management and digital innovation.

The world is blazing with change and digital innovation is fuelling the fire. Process management can help channel the heat into useful work. Unfortunately, research on digital innovation and process management has been conducted by separate communities operating under orthogonal assumptions. We argue that a synthesis of assumptions is required to bring these streams of research together. We offer suggestions for how these assumptions can be updated to facilitate a convergent conversation between the two research streams. We also suggest ways that methodologies from each stream could benefit the other. Together with the three exemplar empirical studies included in the special issue on business process management and digital innovation, we develop a broader foundation for reinventing research on business process management in a world ablaze with digital innovation

Towards a dynamic theory of enacted complexity

Also presented in April 2018 at Asian Management Research Consortium, Seoul, Korea. Also presented in March 2018 at NTU Complexity Conference, Singapore.</p