Moving cultural information systems research toward maturity

Supporting participatory innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparative study of enterprise social media use

Purpose

The need for accelerating innovation is exacerbated as organizations struggle to either adapt or perish in this unforgiving condition due to the COVID-19 disruption. To address this issue, many organizations have embraced employee-driven participatory innovation to survive and thrive albeit the uncertainties. This study aims to investigate the role of enterprise social media (ESM) in supporting and facilitating these efforts.

Design/methodology/approach

This study first identified the underlying mechanisms that allow ESM use to foster and maintain participatory innovation and then reexamined how these mechanisms played out during the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. The data was collected through a questionnaire in two phases, before and during work-from-home mandates, and the results were analyzed and compared to capture similarities and differences.

Findings

The results revealed that innovation culture and management support mediated the effects of ESM use on three measures of innovation productivity in both conditions. Interestingly, the effect of ESM use was more prominent in driving innovation in the work-from-home condition. This effect was not limited to the direct effect of ESM use on innovation productivity but on innovation culture and management support as well.

Originality/value

The results suggest that ESM offer a potentially useful path to support and enable employees to participate in the innovation processes, especially when they work remotely or in a distributed team. More generally, this paper should be of interest to researchers and practitioners interested in understanding, implementing and evaluating enterprise social software applications and encouraging employee-driven participatory innovation.

The “Right” recipes for security culture: a competing values model perspective

Purpose

This study argues that the effect of perceived organizational culture on the formation of security-related subjective norms and the level of compliance pressure will vary based on how the employees perceive their organization's cultural values. These perceptions reflect on the assumptions and principles that organizations use to guide their security-related behaviors. To make these arguments, we adopt the competing values model (CVM), which is a model used to understand the range of organizational values and resulting cultural archetypes.

Design/methodology/approach

This study conducted a survey of working professionals in the banking and higher education industries and used partial least squares (PLS)-structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the data. In a series of post hoc analyses, we ran a set of multi-group analyses to compare the perceived organizational cultural effects between the working professionals in both industries.

Findings

Our study reveals that perceived organizational cultures in favor of stability and control promoted more positive security-related behaviors. However, the different effects were more pronounced when comparing the effects between the working professionals in both industries.

Originality/value

This study is one of the few that examines which cultural archetypes are more effective at fostering positive security behaviors. These findings suggest that we should be cautious about generalizing the effects of organizational culture on security-related actions across different contexts and industries.

Understanding the Chinese information culture and its impact on IT perceptions

Purpose

Drawing upon the theory of information culture from information science and prior research on Chinese information practices. The purpose of this paper is to posit that instead of over-relying on Hofstede’s national cultural values, the IS field should develop theories on national information culture to bridge the theoretical gaps found in explaining the differences in individuals’ IT perceptions and behaviors across cultures.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the objectives of this study, two quantitative studies were conducted. The first study is exploratory in nature and focuses on the development and calibration of an instrument to measure the Chinese information culture (CIC). The second study takes a confirmatory approach to investigate the impact of the CIC on IT perceptions of manager.

Findings

The study develops and validates an instrument for measuring the CIC that comprises information source and format preference, information ownership and analysis style, and centralized decision-making and information control. The CIC is found to influence IT perceptions of managers including perceived performance improvement resulted from IT use, attitude toward using work technologies and attitude on the value of IT in general.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first studies to theorize national information culture to understand IT perceptions at the individual level. The development of the CIC measure provides the much needed methodological support for contextualizing cross-cultural research.

Perceived value of advanced mobile messaging services

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of perceived value on post-acceptance behaviour for users of advanced mobile messaging services (AMMS). The paper also compares differences in the influence of perceived value on satisfaction and of satisfaction on loyalty to AMMS in Spain and Greece, to test the moderating effect of culture.

Design/methodology/approach

Partial least squares path modelling is used to test the model. Perceived value is modelled as a multidimensional reflective construct with four dimensions. Culture is studied at a national level. Differences between countries are tested using the multigroup analysis approach proposed by Henseler et al. (2009).

Findings

Perceived value contributes significantly to satisfaction. Satisfaction also has a significant effect on loyalty. Regarding the moderating effect of culture, the influence of perceived value on satisfaction is higher in Greece than in Spain. The authors report similar findings for the effect of satisfaction on loyalty, demonstrating the relevant moderating role of cultures with different degrees of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism.

Practical implications

This cross-cultural comparison enables mobile phone companies to understand how to provide the greatest value with AMMS in each country in order to increase user satisfaction and loyalty to the service.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies that develops cross-cultural research to analyse the post-acceptance of mobile services. It analyses the effect of perceived value and satisfaction, making an original comparison of two countries generally considered too similar to be compared.

Dissidents with an innovation cause? Non-institutionalized actors’ online social knowledge sharing, solution-finding tensions and technology management innovation

Purpose

– Traditionally, most studies focus on institutionalized management-driven actors to understand technology management innovation. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a need for research to study the nature and role of dissident non-institutionalized actors’ (i.e. outsourced web designers and rapid application software developers). The authors propose that through online social knowledge sharing, non-institutionalized actors’ solution-finding tensions enable technology management innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

– A synthesis of the literature and an analysis of the data (21 interviews) provided insights in three areas of solution-finding tensions enabling management innovation. The authors frame the analysis on the peripherally deviant work and the nature of the ways that dissident non-institutionalized actors deviate from their clients (understood as the firm) original contracted objectives.

Findings

– The findings provide insights into the productive role of solution-finding tensions in enabling opportunities for management service innovation. Furthermore, deviant practices that leverage non-institutionalized actors’ online social knowledge to fulfill customers’ requirements are not interpreted negatively, but as a positive willingness to proactively explore alternative paths.

Research limitations/implications

– The findings demonstrate the importance of dissident non-institutionalized actors in technology management innovation. However, this work is based on a single country (USA) and additional research is needed to validate and generalize the findings in other cultural and institutional settings.

Originality/value

– This paper provides new insights into the perceptions of dissident non-institutionalized actors in the practice of IT managerial decision making. The work departs from, but also extends, the previous literature, demonstrating that peripherally deviant work in solution-finding practice creates tensions, enabling management innovation between IT providers and users.