Developing and Deriving Value from Big Data Analytics Capabilities

In this big data age, big data analytics (BDA) has come to occupy a large role in becoming a major competitive differentiator for companies with many companies significantly accelerating the pace of their investments in BDA (Abbasi et al., 2016). As companies increasingly bet on BDA as the next competitive frontier, there is an imminent need for business leaders to clearly understand and rationalize the economic value gained from costly BDA investments by measuring their impact on objective measures of firm performance (Mikalef et al., 2020). Borrowing from prior empirical literature on IT capabilities and economic value, some scholars have drawn a positive relationship between BDA capabilities, which are built by assembling an array of resources that include a mix of big data, technology, human, and organizational resources among others and firm performance while others have failed to capture commensurate value from BDA investments (Gupta & George, 2016; Wamba et al., 2017; Popovič et al., 2018;). More work is required to understand and articulate the value creation process from capability building to value realization (Grover et al., 2018). While the BDA literature has been very prolific in defining the ingredients that go into building a BDA capability, not much work has been done to highlight the contributions of the manager as a potential source of BDA value creation (Mikalef et al., 2020). The IT-Business value literature has previously demonstrated that resource synchronization and orchestration is a prerequisite to develop and leverage resources strategically (Cragg et al., 2011). Using the resource orchestration framework as a theoretical foundation, this paper addresses the following research questions – 1) How do managers contribute to firm performance by bundling resources to build superior BDA capabilities? 2) How do managers mobilize, coordinate, and deploy these capabilities in concert with firm strategy and market context, and how does that moderate the relationship between BDA capabilities and performance outcomes? 3) Can managerial ability explain the differential performance outcomes in firms with otherwise BDA capability parity? This study will employ a quantitative research approach using a survey targeting top, middle, and operational level analytics managers in publicly traded companies drawn from multiple industries to measure BDA and BDA Managerial Capability given various market contingencies. The survey data will draw measures of firm performance from the Compustat database. The study adds to the scholarly literature by explicating the importance of effective resource management and the contribution of managers to the resource exploitation aspects of value realization from capabilities. From a practical viewpoint, the study enables companies to understand the processes and activities required to create and deploy high-quality BDA capabilities along with the organizational context and strategies necessary to produce superior firm performance

Theorizing the Dual Role of Information Technology in Technostress Research

While recent research has studied Information Technology (IT) as a job stressor, others have proposed IT to be a means to reduce the impacts of job stressors by facilitating communication and coordination, by providing information for better decision making, and by encouraging faithful appropriation. This research proposes both the stress inducing and stress relieving roles that IT might play on employee burnout, job satisfaction, and turnover. Following the job demands-resources model, this research posit that job resources such as IT communication, IT information and IT appropriation support may play a role in mitigating employees’ job stress. We further theorize the moderating role of these job resources on the relationships between other job stressors and burnout. The proposed model provides researchers a holistic view to understand the net effect IT can have on employees by considering simultaneously both the stress inducing and stress relieving component of IT

A SOFTWARE TESTING ASSESSMENT TO MANAGE PROJECT TESTABILITY

The demand for testing services is, to a large extend a ?derived demand? influenced directly by the manner in which prior developed activities are undertaken. The early stages of a structured software development life cycle (SDLC) project can often run behind schedule, shrinking the time available for performing adequate testing especially when software release deadlines have to be met. This situation fosters the need to influence pre-testing activities and manage the testing effort efficiently. Our research examines how to measure testability of a SDLC project before testing begins. It builds on the ?design for testability? perspective by introducing a ?manage for testability? perspective. Software testability focuses on whether the activities of the SDLC process are progressing in ways that enable the testing team to find software product defects if they exist. To address this challenge, we develop a software testing assessment. This assessment is designed to provide testing managers with information needed to: (1) influence pre-testing activities in ways that ultimately increase testing efficiency and effectiveness, and (2) plan testing resources to optimize efficient and effective testing. We developed specific software testing assessment measures through interviews with key informants. We present data collected for the measures for large-scale structured software development projects to illustrate the assessment?s usefulness and application

FORMATION OF IT IDENTITY: INSIGHTS FROM SELF-EXPANSION AND SELF-EXTENSION THEORIES

Ubiquitous use of information technology (IT) today has led to the blurring of boundaries between IT and the individual’s sense of self. Literature has termed this phenomenon as the development of positive IT identity and is defined as the extent to which an individual views use of an IT as integral to his or her sense of self. It is a cognitive assessment of the degree of overlap between the self and a target IT and is reflected in feelings of connectedness with an IT, enthusiasm with an IT, and a sense of reliance upon an IT. Positive IT identity has been shown to not only explain positive information systems (IS) outcomes such as extended IT use, exploratory IT use, cyber security compliance behaviors, happiness and life satisfaction of IT users, and coworker support, but also negative outcomes such as perceived difficulty in time management and self-regulative capabilities. Despite this corpus of research, the extant literature does not describe how people develop IT identity. Preliminary conceptualization on IT identity formation has cited two theoretical frameworks interchangeably for the development of IT identity – self expansion and self- extension. The perspective on self-expansion dictates that individuals have an innate need to expand the meanings attached to their self-concept and one way this need can be fulfilled is by incorporating the capabilities afforded by material objects into their individual self-concepts. The perspective on self-extension dictates that external objects become part of one’s self concept when one is able to exercise power or control over the object. The greater this control, the more closely integrated with self the object becomes. In either case, the end product is the same – the inclusion of IT into an individual’s self-concept i.e. formation of an IT identity. While these frameworks are commonly cited in prior IS literature, the underlying psychological mechanisms through which these perspectives lead to the formation of IT identity are largely missing. The lack of theoretical and empirical work in this area has not only led to these frameworks as being cited interchangeably, but also an ambiguity in understanding which framework is operating in the formation of IT identity. Is it self-expansion or self-extension, or perhaps, both! Understanding how individuals develop positive IT identity is important for at least two reasons. First, given that IT identity is primarily a personal construction, explicating the psychological processes underlying IT identity formation can unravel how individuals experience IT during their interaction with it. Such an understanding can be important to user experience researchers and designers in developing feature set that create deep meaningful experiences that individuals can identify with, potentially creating long-lasting loyal usage of IT. Second, such an understanding can provide insight into the motivational principles individuals use to construct IT identity. This can be useful information for managers wanting to change post adoption resistance behaviors. For example, it is likely that people displaying resistive behaviors with new organizational IT are doing so as a result of being unable to positively identify with new IT. In such a case, managers can design interventions to stimulate the self-expansion or/and self-extension processes that create positive identification with new IT, thus reducing setbacks and losses during new IT implementation. Given the research gap and the importance of the topic, the primary question addressed by this study is how does IT identity develop? To answer this question, the study draws on both theories from the marketing literature to demonstrate that they are indeed distinct strategies triggering different motivational states. While self–expansion motivates the development of emotional attachment to IT, self-extension primarily motivates the development of psychological ownership of IT. It is thorough these two motivational states that individuals are able to positively identify with IT

Predicting Employees\u27 Work Exhaustion, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intention: The Role of Informated Job Resources and Personal Resources

Turnover intention of information technology (IT) professionals and IT users has been a topic of interest to both academics and industry in recent years; job demands such as excessive workload, work exhaustion, relentless deadlines, role conflict and role ambiguity have all been found to affect turnover intention of IT professionals and IT users. Yet, researchers have paid little attention to the influence of job resources and personal resources. The purpose of this research, presented in the form of two essays, is to explore the effect of those influences on turnover intention of IT professionals and IT users.Using job demand-resource theory, the first essay presents a holistic model that integrates job and IT demands and resources of an informated job. We test the influence of these demands and resources on work exhaustion, job satisfaction, and turnover intention of employees in a relatively recent informated industry (i.e. truck drivers). We find that demands of an informated job increase stress resulting in work exhaustion. However, we also find that resources of an informated job, including IT resources, reduce the influence of work exhaustion and increase job satisfaction. Recommendations for job design to improve employee well-being and improve job retention are offered based on the study results.Using identity theory, the second essay examines the effect of personal resources i.e. role identity, team identity, and organizational identity on software development professionals’ job satisfaction and turnover intention. Identity is a form of personal resource that individuals bring into their role performance as a professional in their area of expertise (role identity), as a member of a team (team identity), and as a loyal employee of the organization (organizational identity). Using data from 192 software development professionals, the results of the study show that developers who identified highly with their role experienced greater job satisfaction but were also more likely to quit their organization. Contrary to our expectations, developers’ team identity did not affect either their job satisfaction or turnover intention

Using Social Intelligence to Overcome Agile Adoption Challenges

Agile adoption is gaining popularity in many organizations, even those steeped in traditional software development. However, project managers often cannot implement agile to its full potential given the numerous human- and process-related challenges. This research focuses on how project managers can tailor agile to overcome human-related challenges. Using a grounded theory approach, we examine how managers’ social intelligence competencies play a pivotal role in overcoming the human-related challenges emanating from stakeholders rooted in the traditional waterfall development approach. An understanding of this area informs practitioners on the interventions that can be taken and competencies that can be cultivated to maximize the success of agile adoption despite human-related challenges

Making Sense of Resistance to Agile Adoption in Waterfall Organizations: Social Intelligence and Leadership

Organizations wanting to adopt agile software development methodologies often face resistance from development team members with structured development backgrounds. While project management best practices would advocate the need to stifle opposition, recent research suggests resistance may have value in enabling project leaders to respond effectively. Using a qualitative multi-site case study approach, this study elaborates on how scrum masters perceive, interpret, and act upon resistance to enable agile adoption in a waterfall organization. We find that scrum masters need to be more socially intelligent in order to sense the resistance and develop appropriate actions and interventions to enable agile adoption

Exploring the Formation of IT Identity: A Technology-Value Fit Model

As information technology (IT) increasingly intertwines with what we do and who we are, a new construct, IT identity was coined to capture this entanglement. IT identity is defined as the degree to which an individual view an IT use as integral to his or her sense of self (Carter and Grover 2015). Despite its many recognized benefits, little remains known about how IT identity forms. This study uses a grounded theory approach to reveal the process underlying the formation of IT identity. Using the critical incident technique, we interviewed 15 people from different walks of life using different ITs to investigate the process of IT identity formation. Our data analysis revealed the emergence of a Technology-Value Fit (TVF) model which suggests that IT identity forms as a result of fit between the technology characteristics and a person’s value system. The paper concludes with research and practical implications

Making sense of resistance to agile adoption in waterfall organizations: Social intelligence and leadership

Organizations wanting to adopt agile software development methodologies often face resistance from development team members with structured development backgrounds. While project management best practices would advocate the need to stifle opposition, recent research suggests resistance may have value in enabling project leaders to respond effectively. Using a qualitative multi-site case study approach, this study elaborates on how scrum masters perceive, interpret, and act upon resistance to enable agile adoption in a waterfall organization. We find that scrum masters need to be more socially intelligent in order to sense the resistance and develop appropriate actions and interventions to enable agile adoption

A Workaround Model for Competent Project Managers using Agile Development in a Traditional Organization

Agile adoption is gaining popularity in organizations, even those steeped in traditional software development because it has been shown to offer significant benefits. Project managers are often unable to implement agile to its full potential given stakeholder resistance. Project managers find workarounds as a compromise to resistance in certain situations, whether the actions are harmless or essential to resistance. This paper unfolds a case study to examine how project managers’ social intelligence competencies that include working with, persuading, and influencing people plays a pivotal role in working around resistance to agile adoption emanating from stakeholders within and outside the team. Limitations and future research are discussed