Going Beyond the Dominant Paradigm for Information Technology Innovation Research: Emerging Concepts and Methods

Research on information technology (IT) innovation is concerned with identifying the factors that facilitate or hinder the adoption and diffusion of new IT-based processes or products. Most of this research has been conducted within the confines of a dominant paradigm wherein innovations are assumed to be beneficial, and organizations that have greater innovation-related needs and abilities are expected to exhibit a greater amount of innovative activity. This essay suggests that the dominant paradigm may be reaching the point of diminishing returns as a framework for supporting ground-breaking research, and urges researchers to adopt a more innovative approach to the study of IT innovation itself. Toward this end, I present seven opportunities for conducting new kinds of research that go beyond the dominant paradigm

Trust Across Borders: Buyer-Supplier Trust in Global Business-to-Business E-Commerce

This study focuses on trust formation and development in global buyer-supplier relationships. Trust affects all business relationships, especially global business-to-business (B2B) transactions due to the distances between buyers and suppliers. We use information signaling theory to examine how information indices and signals affect buyers’ trust in suppliers in global B2B commerce. Specifically, we examine how buyers’ trust is affected by (1) their perceptions of the national integrity and legal structure of suppliers’ country, and (2) third-party verifications of suppliers on B2B exchanges. Because buyer-supplier relationships usually evolve over time, we study how the effects of indices and signals change as the number of transactions between the partners increases. A survey of global organizational buyers finds that perceptions of national integrity, legal structure, and supplier verifications are all positively related to buyers’ trust. However, the number of prior transactions between buyers and suppliers moderates the impact of perceived legal structure on buyers’ trust

Matching People And Groups: Recruitment And Selection In Online Games

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have great potential as sites for research within the social and behavioral sciences and human-computer interaction. This is because “guilds” — semi-persistent groups in online games — are much like groups in real organizations. In this paper, we examine how groups and individuals find appropriate matches and whether appropriate matches lead newcomers to stay longer in their groups in an online game environment. Results from archival data, observation, and survey in the game World of Warcraft (WoW) indicate that different selection methods lead to person-group fit for social and task-oriented characteristics and good fit leads recruits to stay longer in their group. In particular, recruitment of new members to task-oriented guilds was most successful when brief interactions were used whereas recruitment to social-oriented guilds was most successful when probationary periods and referrals were used

Author Correction: A consensus-based transparency checklist.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Work-Unit Absenteeism: Effects of Satisfaction, Commitment, Labor Market Conditions, and Time

Prior research is limited in explaining absenteeism at the unit level and over time. We developed and tested a model of unit-level absenteeism using five waves of data collected over six years from 115 work units in a large state agency. Unit-level job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and local unemployment were modeled as time-varying predictors of absenteeism. Shared satisfaction and commitment interacted in predicting absenteeism but were not related to the rate of change in absenteeism over time. Unit-level satisfaction and commitment were more strongly related to absenteeism when units were located in areas with plentiful job alternatives

An integarted surgical suite management information system

The operational aspects, application areas, and results achieved from an integrated surgical suite management information system are described. The system, which has been operating within Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, for 4 years, captures comprehensive data for each surgical episode, performs extensive edits on these data to assure data base integrity, and utilizes this data base in multiple applications. These applications include fixed-format reporting for medical staff and management; ad hoc retrieval capabilities to support research, education, and decision making; and linkage to other hospital systems to reduce both data redundancy and paper flow.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45000/1/10916_2005_Article_BF02222176.pd

On becoming (un)committed: A taxonomy and test of newcomer on-boarding scenarios

How does the bond between the newcomer and the organization develop over time? Process research on temporal patterns of newcomer's early commitment formation has been very scarce because theory and appropriate longitudinal research designs in this area are lacking. From extant research we extract three process-theoretical accounts regarding how the newcomer adjustment process evolves over time: (1) Learning to Love; (2) Honeymoon Hangover; and (3) High Match, Moderate Match, or Low Match. From these scenarios we develop a taxonomy of newcomer adjustment scenarios. Further, we empirically verify these different scenarios by examining naturally occurring "trajectory classes," which are found to display strengthening, weakening, or stabilizing of the employee-organization linkage. For this, we use a sample of 72 Ph. D. graduates whose organizational commitment history was recorded in their first 25 consecutive weeks of new employment. In closing, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the scenario-based approach

A consensus-based transparency checklist

We present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and behavioural research. An accompanying online application allows users to complete the form and generate a report that they can submit with their manuscript or post to a public repository

The Role of Aggregation in the Measurement of IT-Related Organizational Innovation

The extent of organizational innovation with IT, an important construct in the IT innovation literature, has been measured in many different ways. Some measures are more narrowly focused while others aggregate innovative behaviors across a set of innovations or across stages in the assimilation lifecycle within organizations. There appear to be some significant tradeoffs involving aggregation. More aggregated measures can be more robust and generalizable and can promote stronger predictive validity, while less aggregated measures allow more context-specific investigations and can preserve clearer theoretical interpretations. This article begins with a conceptual analysis that identifies the circumstances when these tradeoffs are most likely to favor aggregated measures. It is found that aggregation should be favorable when: (1) the researcher's interest is in general innovation or a model that generalizes to a class of innovations, (2) antecedents have effects in the same direction in all assimilation stages, (3) characteristics of organizations can be treated as constant across the innovations in the study, (4) characteristics of innovations can not be treated as constant across organizations in the study, (5) the set of innovations being aggregated includes substitutes or moderate complements, and (6) sources of noise in the measurement of innovation may be present. The article then presents an empirical study using data on the adoption of software process technologies by 608 US based corporations. This study\u97which had circumstances quite favorable to aggregation\u97found that aggregating across three innovations within a technology class more than doubled the variance explained compared to single innovation models. Aggregating across assimilation stages had a slight positive effect on predictive validity. Taken together, these results provide initial confirmation of the conclusions from the conceptual analysis regarding the circumstances favoring aggregation

The assimilation and diffusion of software process innovations

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-323).by Robert G. Fichman.Ph.D