Technology Adoption by Groups: A Test of Twin Predictions based on Social Structure and Technological Characteristics

While the study of technology adoption by individuals and organizations has received considerable attention from researchers in the information systems discipline, little is known about how groups (an important social entity within organizations) adopt technologies. Drawing on past research in groups and technology adoption, this study proposes an “additive model” of technology adoption by groups, surrounding the “twin predictions” of the key social and technological factors. Specifically, the study examines the effect of the group’s social structure (e.g., influence of the majority and the high-status member), and the features of the technology (e.g., the technology’s complexity, transferability, and group supportability), on the group’s adoption of the technology. Further, the model also outlines the effect of the group’s adoption of the technology on the group’s performance. A laboratory experiment, where groups were given the choice of selecting one of two different technologies for performing a flowcharting task was conducted to test the model. Even though the empirical examination highlights the dominant effect of the technology characteristics, the study illustrates that this dominance is not an indication of the support of the “technological imperative” perspective, but is actually a testimony to the fact that “technology characteristics” is in fact a sociotechnical construct

A Model of Group Technology Acceptance: Some Preliminary Findings

While the literature on the technology acceptance model and its extensions have contributed significantly to our understanding of how individuals accept a technology, little is known about how groups accept technology. Since organizations are moving to collective structures such as groups that are provided with technologies for performing tasks, it is critical to understand how they accept and use technology so as to better guide organizations’ investments and implementation decisions. Drawing on theories of group influence, and prior research on group communication media and conflict, the paper proposes an input-process-output (I-P-O) model for conceptualizing group technology acceptance. We also present some preliminary empirical results that appear to support key aspects of the model

An Exploration into the Process of Requirements Elicitation: A Grounded Approach

Requirements elicitation (RE) is a critical phase in information systems development (ISD), having significant impacts on software quality and costs. While it has remained a key topic of interest for IS researchers, a review of the existing literature suggests that there are very few studies examining how the social process associated with RE unfolds. Prior literature acknowledges that this process involves collaboration between RE participants (e.g., user-reps and systems analysts) where knowledge regarding the system requirements is shared, absorbed, and co-constructed, such that shared mental models of the requirements can form. However, collaboration and knowledge sharing within the RE process has been characterized as tenuous in the literature, given that the groups of RE participants bring very different kinds of knowledge into this activity, and trust among the two parties cannot be guaranteed at any point. Despite acknowledgement of the tenuous nature of RE, we are not aware of research that has attempted to present an integrated view of how collaboration, knowledge transfer, and trust influence the RE process. Using data from two different organizations and adopting a grounded approach, this study presents an integrative process model of RE. The study’s findings suggest that RE is composed of four different collaborative states. The study elaborates on the four states, and identifies important factors that tend to trigger transitions from one state to another

Individual Factors in Virtual Teams: A TIP Theory Perspective

In the pursuit of rapid software development, globally distributed information systems development teams are a growing phenomena in many organization. In order to be successful, these teams must have members who will be high degree of unity and are satisfied upon completion of the project. In order to test some possible factors that may be important in distributed team selection we must first understand individual’s contribution to the team. McGrath’s Time, Interaction and Performance (TIP) Theory is proposed as a framework to evaluate possible individual characteristics which may influence a member’s satisfaction and unity in development projects. This preliminary cross-sectional study tests TIP Theory while also identifying possible factors that may lead to increased group unity and group satisfaction. Implications for the selection of distributed development teams are discussed

Knowledge Transfer through User-Analyst Collaboration during Requirements Elicitation

Requirements elicitation is a critical phase in information systems development (ISD), having significant impacts on software quality and costs. Prior research suggests that it is a collaborative activity, where system requirements-related knowledge is extensively shared between users and analysts. This knowledge sharing can get extremely tenuous given the different knowledge perspectives of the two participant groups. However, till date, no known research has attempted to understand how this collaborative process unfolds and how knowledge is shared between users and analysts. Using data from in-depth interviews with analysts from two organizations, the proposed research study attempts to understand how the requirements elicitation process unfolds, how knowledge is shared, and what impedes/enables knowledge transfer in this critical process

A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a rapidly growing technology-enabled process that has the potential to disrupt the capital market space. In order for this process to work efficiently, it is important to clarify the issues surrounding the phenomenon from the founders’, the backers’, and the technology providers’ viewpoints. We begin with an ecosystem view to understand the stakeholders and their roles in the crowdfunding process. We review the literature with a focus on how current research fits into the overall crowdfunding phenomenon. Guided by typology and classification research approaches, we identify six distinct crowdfunding business models: private equity, royalty, microfinance, peer-to-peer lending, rewards, and donation. Based on identified roles and crowdfunding business models, we propose a conceptual research framework. We conclude by showing how current research fits into our proposed framework and offer suggestions for future research directions

Exploring Work-Life Conflict in Global Software Development (GSD) Contexts: A Survey of IT Professionals based in India

Global Software Development (GSD) is now a mega-trend. While there is a rich literature exploring various facets of the GSD phenomenon, few (if any) studies have focused on the working conditions of IT professionals, specifically their work-life conflict. In this paper, we discuss our research-in-progress on this issue, wherein we empirically examine the effects of four categories of relevant antecedents (individual factors, organizational factors, IS project-based factors, and the nature of personnel distribution in teams) on work-life conflict, and the effect of work-life conflict on outcome variables such as organizational commitment and individual’s performance. Analysis of data collected as part of an on-going study show that the measurement instruments are valid and reliable, and many of the hypothesized relationships hold. The aspiration of this study is to be among the first to empirically examine work-life conflict (WLC) issues in a GSD setting