Diffusion of Modern Software Practices: Influence of Organizational Process Variables

A number of modern software practices (MSP) have emerged over the last decade in response to the difficulties that have tended to accompany software development efforts. Recent studies of software development groups, however, indicate that these MSP are generally not being used. Since software development is a labor-intensive, cognitive activity whose success is largely determined by individual initiative and discretion, the processes involved in software development would seem to have a high potential of being affected by organizational design variables--such as centralization and formalization--that enlarge or constrain individual influence or discretion. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of centralization and formalization on the diffusion of MSP. Centralization and formalization have previously been employed in research designs investigating organizational innovation. The results, however, have been mixed. Three arguments can be raised toward explaining these inconsistent findings. First, innovation is a multi-phased process in which the influence of centralization and formalization could be expected to differ with each phase. A generally accepted phase sequence involves the initiation, adoption, and the implementation of an innovation. Second, innovations may be compatible or incompatible with the individual interests of organizational members. As incentives for individual initiative or discretion would vary depending on an innovation\u27s compatibility, the expected influence of centralization and formalization should also vary. Third, organization innovations represent many vested interests, with an economical partitioning being the technical and administrative cores. As an innovation might possess significant or negligible meaning to such cores, the influence of centralization or formalization through individual behaviors would be expected to vary as well

The Battle for Dominance: Innovating Firms\u27 Strategic Market Success in the Context of a Standards War

To increase the likelihood of success of their market-focused innovations, firms that develop innovations for targeted markets regularly communicate with market participants in order to reduce the uncertainties participants hold regarding the firms’ innovations. Among other tactics, these firms employ strategic market signals. The paper develops three types of uncertainty (technical, market and standards) associated with the market-focused innovations as well as hypotheses related to the impacts of firms’ signals, which are used to address the uncertainty issues, on firms’ market success during the standards war. The research findings have implications for both theory and practice

Organizational Competencies for Managing Investments in Visionary Applications of Information Technology

Despite the noted potential of information technology (IT) for enhancing organizational effectiveness (Boynton and Victor 1991; Venkatraman 1991), few fm-ns seem to have achieved consistent success in deploying IT in ways that fundamentally alter industry practices or existing work processes associated with value chain activities and customer interactions (McKenney 1995). Prior IS research has focused attention on the impacts and organizational drivers associated with strategic applications of IT (Sabherwal and King 1995). The main objective of such applications is the seizing of competitive advantage in the marketplace. The focus of this researchisuponapplicationsoflTthatarebroaderinorganizationalscope: whiletheirultimategoalmightbetheattainmentofmarket advantages, their immediate focus might be on the enhancement of business competence with respect to managerial decision-making, customer service, manufacturing management, or launching of a variety of value-added products and services. In order to distinguish such strategic applications of IT, we term them as visionary applications of IT. We consider them to be different from strategic applicationsoflTintworespects: (i)whilevisionaryapplicationsareaimedattheaugmentationofbusinesscompetencies,strategic applications are often targeted on exploiting market or competitive advantage opportunities and (ii) visionary applications are usually driven by the visionary insight of a senior business executive and exhibit an enterprise-wide flavor in their implementation scope, whereas strategic applications often arise in business units and are restricted to a specific market or business in their implementation scope

LOST IN TRANSLATION: IMPLICATIONS OF A FAILED ORGANIZING VISION FOR THE GOVERNANCE OF A MULTI-ORGANIZATION SHARED IT INFRASTRUCTURE

We studied the early-stage development of a newly formed shared services unit providing IT infrastructure services to multiple enterprises and examined the evolution of the organizing vision established for the unit. Through a three-cycle action research design, we found that the initiallyarticulated organizing vision failed to take hold with constituents and no effort was undertaken to evolve this organizing vision. In the absence of a strong and compelling organizing vision, client entities interacted with the shared services unit on an individual basis, compromising the initial purpose of the shared services unit as an innovation that had the potential to provide value as a ‘social good’ across a community. In examination of contributing factors of a failed organizing vision, we found that discourse across multiple levels of the community and effective chargeback processes were critical elements for evolving a meaningful organizing vision. Research and practical implications of these findings are discussed

The Effects of Knowledge Embeddedness on the Diffusion of Case Technologies within Organizations

Systems development in organizations is well recognized as a knowledge-intensive effort. Since the relevant application domain knowledge is thinly spread across an organization, the acquisition, sharing, and integration of knowledge are significant activities during the development process. Advocates of computer-aided software engineering tools (CASE) claim that these tools offer a potentially valuable feature/\u27or facilitating such knowledge integration and management activities: the central repository\u27, which is a location for storing, retrieving, and maintaining a variety of applications development information. Yet, the effects of the CASE repository on the diffusion of the technology have received limited attention in prior research. This study exmnines whether the embedding ofapplications developmentknowledge withintheCASErepositoryinfluencesthediffusionoftheCASE technologyacross apphcations projects in organizations. We develop a consmmt called knowledge embeddedness, which refers to the extent to which relevant applications development knowledge is systematically populated within the CASE repository. Based on data gathered from 168 organizations, through a large-sample survey of CASE user groups, we found strong support for the relationship between kalowledge embeddedness and diffusion of CASE technology. These results have interesting implications for future research and practice

The Impact of Color Graphic Report Formats on Decision Performance and Learning

One of the more common themes of the information systems literature involves the desirability of using graphics and col or to enhance the useful ness of reports and di spl ays. Very 1 ittl e empi rical research, however, has been di rected toward examining the real contribution of graphics and color to decision maker effectiveness; and, the findings of the few studies that have been undertaken are, at best, inconelusive. This paper reports on a laboratory experiment (using experienced internal auditors as subjects) that examines the contributions of color graphic outputs.on decision performance and learning. Significant resul ts were observed (controlling for individual differences) with color graphic reports proving advantageous with a simple, but not a compl ex, decl si on si tuati on