Self-tracking, life-logging, quantified-self, personal analytics, and personal informatics are terms for the current trend to collect and analyze specific features of the life on a regular basis through mobile and wearable digital devices. Users of digital self-tracking devices benefit from information about themselves. Thereby, the explanatory power of this information heavily depends on post-adoption continued usage of these devices.

The aim of a recent research project is to empirically analyze the factors that lead to continuous use of self-tracking devices. So far, research has largely focused on phases until IS adoption in a work environment and little on post-adoption use in a consumer context which centers on either continuance or discontinuance. To advance research in this area, we developed a conceptual model that combines both in one comprehensive model by building on established post-adoption theories.

Conceptual Model of Self-Tracking Usage

While research on the individual-level continuance/discontinuance of IS is yet scarce, our study is one the first that further explores this promising path and suggests a comprehensive, yet parsimonious model. We will continue our research with a quantitative-empirical evaluation of the developed model. With our research, we aim at contributing to both a better theoretical understanding in the field of IS post-adoption in a consumer context and giving practical implications for producers of self-tracking devices.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Buchwald, A., Letner, A., Urbach, N. and von Entress-Fürsteneck, M. (2015) Towards Explaining the Use of Self-Tracking Devices: Conceptual Development of a Continuance and Discontinuance Model, Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2015), December, 13-16, Fort Worth, Texas, USA. (Link)

A growing trend in today’s enterprise applications market is the installation of cloud-based enterprise systems (ES). From consumer goods companies, such as Starbucks, to financial service companies, such as Allianz, more and more companies are implementing cloud-based ES for specific lines of businesses, such as human resource management (e.g. SuccessFactors) or customer relationship management (e.g. Salesforce.com). In addition, there are also a wealth of functionally integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) service offerings (e.g. SAP Business ByDesign), which now make sophisticated ERP systems affordable to small and medium sized enterprises. As cloud computing has become a mature technology broadly being adopted by companies across all industries, cloud  service  providers  are  increasingly  turning  their  attention  to  retaining  their customers. However, only little research has been conducted on investigating the antecedents of service continuance in an organizational context.

In a recent research project, we carried out a quantitative-empirical study to address this gap in research. We developed a conceptual model that builds on previous research on organizational level continuance. We tested this model, using survey data gathered from IT decision makers of companies which have adopted cloud enterprise systems.

Organizational-Level Drivers of Cloud Continuance

The data was analyzed using PLS. The results show that continuance intention can be predicted both by socio-organizational and technology-related factors. The variables identified were able to explain 55.9% of the variance in continuance intention. System quality had the highest positive effect on the dependent variable, followed by system investment. Information quality showed no significant effect.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Walther, S., Sarker, S., Urbach, N., Sedera, D., Eymann, T. and Otto, B. (2015): Exploring Organizational Level Continuance of Cloud-Based Enterprise Systems, Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2015), May 26-29, Münster, Germany. (Link)

Organizational information technology (IT) standards have become increasingly important for companies. However, insights from practice indicate that employees tend to violate these standards, generating a need for governance and management mechanisms with which to successfully implement them in the organization. The literature reveals a lack of research on organizational IT standards’ governance.

The aim of a recent research project was to idenity the individual and organizational factors that influence an employee’s deviant behavior towards organizational IT standards. We therefore derived a conceptual multi-level model deductively from the literature, which we supplemented with an interview study.

Conceptual Model of IT Standard Deviance

Our work enriches IS research and practitioner bodies of knowledge. We do so by first extending our knowledge of an employee’s deviant behavior towards organizational IT standards. Second, we provide valuable insights for organizations by providing starting points to improve their standardi-zation efforts.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Dittes, S., Urbach, N., Ahlemann, F., Smolnik S. and Müller, T. (2015) Why don’t you stick to them? – Understanding factors influencing and counter-measures to combat deviant behavior towards organizational IT standards, Proceedings of the 12. Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2015), March 4-6, Osnabrück, Germany. (Link)

Standardizing organizational information technology (IT) infrastructure and processes is stated as one of the most important activities of today’s companies. Since IT is used and embedded in more and more business areas within companies, the complexity and costs of organizational IT infrastructures and processes are continuously rising. In this context, IT standardization represents a possible means to reduce complexity and maintain control over the organizational IT. Given the practical importance of organizational IT standards and standardization efforts, we carried out a database-driven literature search. We found that research on the management, governance and enforcement of IT standards within organizations is relatively limited. Previous studies indicate that many standardization efforts fail suffering from low acceptance rates among staff and rather superficial use Therefore, it is essential for companies to implement management and governance mechanisms to enforce the usage of IT standards in order to achieve their standardization goals. However, before designing such management mechanisms, it is important to first understand the drivers of employee’s acceptance towards organizational IT standards – because without having a deep understanding of employee’s acceptance behavior towards organizational IT standards, it is not possible to design efficient management mechanisms in order to raise the acceptance rate. Therefore it is especially important to understand the cognitive drivers from an employee’s perspective.

The aim of a recent research project was to discover the most important influential factors from an employee’s perspective when it comes to accepting or rejecting organizational IT standards by building a perception-based model. Since our work seeks for explaining employee’s acceptance towards organizational IT standards, we embedded our study in the acceptance research stream by deriving a first understanding of the phenomenon. Building on this knowledge, we designed a field study approach based on interviews, resulting in a conceptual model that explains IT standard acceptance on an individual level.

Individual Drivers of IT Standard Acceptance

Our work has a twofold contribution: First, we advance the research field on organizational IT standards by establishing links to the field of acceptance research and offering explanations for individual acceptance of those standards. Second, our developed model serves as a basis for managing organizational IT standardization.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Müller, T., Dittes, S., Ahlemann, F., Urbach, N. and Smolnik, S. (2015) Because Everybody is Different: Towards Understanding the Acceptance of Organizational IT Standards, Proceedings of the 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-48), January 5-8, Kauai, Hawaii. (Link)

IT vendor management (ITVM) plays an increasingly relevant role for IT organizations. External vendors play a key role in relation to IT organizations; many companies already spend more than half their IT budgets on products and services from external vendors and are looking to raise the IT budget amount dedicated to external IT procurement. Despite the abundant prescriptive literature on ITVM, studies reveal that companies are often dissatisfied with the deliverables supplied by external IT vendors. The problem of low satisfaction with procured IT products and services is gaining relevance for IT organizations owing to the increased involvement of vendors in the modern IT value chain; increasingly, vendors and their staff are in direct contact with both internal IT personnel and business users. However, despite the importance of a high IT customer satisfaction level for IT organizations, the ITVM literature focuses mainly on enhancing the quality of deliverables and makes no recommendations on how to directly enhance customer satisfaction.

To address the problem of dissatisfaction with IT products and services delivered by external vendors, we investigated current ITVM practices and identify improvement areas for these practices in a recent research project. Since there are abundant prescriptions on how to design ITVM in the IS literature, we provide detailed recommendations on how to extend current ITVM practices so as to enhance customer satisfaction. We followed the design science paradigm in information systems (IS) research, which is a problem-solving and prescription-driven paradigm that seeks to create new things that serve human purposes and provide solutions to management problems. Our goal was to extend the ITVM literature by developing a design theory for customer satisfaction-oriented ITVM. Specifically, we aim to (1) derive a generalized set of metarequirements (i.e. generalized requirements) on the ITVM practices to be developed to enhance customer satisfaction, (2) to explain why these metarequirements are met by a generalized set of ITVM design principles (DP) (i.e. generalized design prescriptions), and (3) to deliver blueprints for the implementation of DPs. To answer our research question, we conducted an action research study at a large professional service company.

Constructs of the Design Theory

In a recent publication, we theoretically explain and present preliminary empirical evidence of why the implementation of a particular DP is expected to lead to higher customer satisfaction. Our findings indicate that establishing benefits sharing and incentive models for IT vendors, as well as defining and steering customer experience, are the chief management practices that promise improved IT customer satisfaction. Our work’s contribution is twofold: First, we present a generalized design theory for implementing customer satisfaction-oriented ITVM. Second, we develop a basic theoretical understanding of which DPs are needed to enhance customer satisfaction and of how these DPs contribute to reaching this goal. Formulating such DPs can be a first step towards a more general prescriptive research in the field of ITVM, which is dominated by studies on IT outsourcing management and governance. Our research results have immediate practical implications. After having exploited the potential of detailed contracts and strict enforcement of governance guidelines, our research suggests that companies can only reach the next level of ITVM by addressing the “soft” factors that influence customer satisfaction, and by establishing a trustful work atmosphere with IT vendors. In addition, explaining a DP’s MRs is essential for organizations seeking to implement ITVM. This explanation allows companies to better judge whether a certain practice can lead to significant ITVM improvement in a particular organizational setting and to better measure the impact of an ITVM practice.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Urbach, N., Ahlemann, F. and El Arbi, F. (2014): Towards a Design Theory for Customer Satisfaction-Oriented IT Vendor Management, Proceedings of the 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2014), August 7-10, Savannah, Georgia. (Link)

Un-enacted projects are those projects that have not been officially evaluated by the project portfolio management but do exist although they are not known to a company’s project portfolio. As a consequence, resources thought to be available often prove to be actually unavailable and that unofficial initiatives eventually compete for scarce resources. One particular type of these un-enacted projects are bottom-up initiatives. Bottom-up un-enacted projects are unofficial initiatives on which employees spend time without order but with which they intend to benefit their organizations. While previous research highlights the great potential of bottom-up un-enacted projects, they only focus on the individual level but leave the organizational level for further research.

In a recent research project, we aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the organizational drivers of bottom-up un-enacted projects. We draw on deviance theory to develop a conceptual model for explaining the occurrence of these projects. In order to triangulate the emerging model with insights from practice, we use interview data to cross-check and refine the theory-driven model. The key result of our work is a conceptual model that comprises the organizational antecedents to explain the occurrence of bottom-up un-enacted projects.

Model explaining the occurrence of bottom-up un-enacted projects

Our results advance the theoretical discourse on the concept of un-enacted projects by proposing a conceptual model for explaining the occurrence of a specific type of un-enacted projects, namely bottom-up initiatives, from an organizational perspective. By relying on organizational deviance theory as a theoretical lens, our study is one of the first that applies this reference theory to the field of information systems in general, and more particular to the domain of project portfolio management. From a practical point of view, we expect our model after a thorough empirical evaluation to be a beneficial instrument to evaluate and predict the occurrence of bottom-up initiatives in a particular organizational setting. Having identified the levers for the emergence of such un-enacted projects, responsible practitioners will receive a basis for steering their organization in the intended direction.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Buchwald, A., Urbach, N. and Ahlemann, F. (2014) Understanding the Organizational Antecedents of Bottom-Up Un-Enacted Projects – Towards a Conceptual Model Based on Deviance Theory, Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2014), June 9-11, Tel Aviv, Israel. (Link)

By intelligently using the information in and around them, organizations are able to improve their decision-making and better realize their objectives. Some authors even claim that organizations may lose competitiveness by not systematically analyzing the available information. However, to obtain the desired insights, data need to be sourced, stored, and analyzed. During the past years, accessing and processing the collected, voluminous, and heterogeneous amounts of data has become increasingly time consuming and complex. With a total of 1.8 zettabyte in 2011, the amount of generated data has not yet reached its climax: as expected by IDC, a global provider of IT market intelligence, the total amount of data collected until the end of 2012 is estimated to be 1.48 times the amount of data collected in previous years, with more than 90% of this data being unstructured. Businesses increasingly use these data masses provided by millions of networked sensors in mobile phones, cashier systems, automobiles, or weather stations to learn more about their customers, suppliers, and operations. This development raises the question of how companies manage to cope with the characteristics of the ever-increasing amount of data, referred to as Big Data.

In a recent research project we aimed at providing a set of organizational contingency factors that influence different Big Data strategies organizations may implement. In order to do so, we reviewed existing literature to identify different Big Data strategies as well as contingency factors and synthesized both into a contingency matrix that may support practitioners in choosing a suitable Big Data strategy for their specific context.

Based on our analysis, we found that different organizational environments pursue different requirements on a Big Data strategy. To better support practitioners in Big Data strategy choice, we compared the four identified Big Data strategies regarding how well they addressed each of the contingency factors. For instance, when the relevance of Big Data analytics is high in a company, the MapReduce strategy seems most fruitful (resulting in a “+” assessment). However, also a hybrid solution might be valuable in case it follows a MapReduce-dominant approach. If in turn an RDBMS-dominant implementation is chosen, the hybrid strategy is only slightly better than a “pure” RDBMS approach (resulting in a “+/o” assessment).

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Ebner, K., Bühnen, T. and Urbach, N. (2014) Think Big with Big Data: Identifying Suitable Big Data Strategies in Corporate Environments, Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-47), January 6-9, Hilton Waikoloa, Big Island. (Link)

The fast development of information technology (IT) and the rise of the Internet have resulted in new ways that people deal with information and interact and communicate with each other. Today a plethora of information systems (IS) exist that aim at supporting individuals, organizations, or other entities in deriving advantages from these new possibilities. However, it is often not clear to what extent such IS achieve their purpose. This lack of clarity is not surprising; assessing the impact of IS is difficult  because of problems such as the difficulty of assessing benefits using tangible numbers.  IS success research, which has been underway for more than three decades, has suggested various models and constructs to measure and explain IS success.  IS success, as the ultimate dependent variable, is typically measured in terms of its effect – often labeled “impact” or “net benefit” – on a particular entity. Net benefit is often regarded as the most important success measure because it captures both the positive and the negative effects of IS on users and other entities. However, because of its multi-dimensionality, IS success can be evaluated from several perspectives and at various levels, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to agree on the best way to measure the impact of IS.

It has been suggested to evaluate the impact of IS on the individual and the organizational level. However, some researchers have criticized that these two levels are only two points on a continuum of possible beneficiaries. Because of this criticism, the understanding of the net benefit construct was significantly broadened in order to leave room for further expansion to investigate other dimensions of impact or benefit. Although research has suggested the investigation of other dimensions, such as workgroups or society, the studies that have adopted such dimensions are rare. Therefore, the full variety of potential dimensions of IS impact, their differentiation, and potential approaches to their measurement remain unclear. While the literature has provided an in-depth analysis of the independent variables of IS success, to our knowledge no overview of contemporary dimensions of IS impact and their operationalizations has yet been presented.

Accordingly, in a recent research project, our goal was to synthesize literature on IS success and to propose a framework of potential IS impact dimensions, along with measures we identified in the literature that are suitable for operationalizing them. As a result, we provide an IS Success Impact Framework (ISIF) that provides further insights on the nature of IS success and guides future studies on IS success by providing direction on how to measure the net benefits of IS. Our work contributes to IS research in that it (a) synthesizes and (b) extends the knowledge on IS success evaluation.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Herbst, A., Urbach, N. and vom Brocke, J. (2014) Shedding Light on the Impact Dimension of Information Systems Success: A Synthesis of the Literature, Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-47), January 6-9, Hilton Waikoloa, Big Island. (Link)

Today, organizations increasingly use and depend on information technology (IT) to achieve their business objectives. The use of IT is grained through an amalgam of organizational, technical, and cultural influences. Effective IT governance (ITG) is required to orchestrate this mixture, which has become an important issue in both academic research and organizational practice. Despite its popularity, the ITG notion remains vague. The term ITG has been widely used by many parties, such as IT managers, consultants, auditors, and software providers, for various aspects of corporate IT management. Practitioners’ perceptions of ITG objectives, properties, and responsibilities thus appear as unclear and heterogeneous as they do in the literature. In addition, comprehensive knowledge of the factors influencing ITG success and its subsequent impact in terms of a unifying model is scarce. Existing practitioner guides do provide helpful advice, but are often not generalized from specific implementations, display limited rigor, and do not provide sufficient explanation of the cause-effect relationships. Furthermore, previous academic research has only provided studies on individual ITG success determinants and consequences. However, none of these studies combine ITG success determinants and consequences into a comprehensive and integrated model of ITG success and its impact.

In a recent research project, we addressed two research objectives accordingly: (1) understanding the factors that influence and result from successful ITG, and (2) integrating these factors into a model that explains ITG success and its impact. Given the rather limited theoretical body of knowledge that underpins ITG success research, we followed a qualitative-explorative approach. We conducted 25 interviews in 19 companies across different industries, analyzed and interpreted the collected data by applying extensive content analysis, and compared our findings with prior research results. Aggregating what we learned from the 25 interviews, we propose a model that describes how the various observed constructs are interrelated and how they contribute to or result from successful ITG.

Our results contribute to research on ITG by providing a model that explains how ITG should be designed in order to be successful and what the organizational impact of successful ITG will be. Our research identified several constructs and relationships that are strongly supported by empirical evidence, some of which previous research has not investigated. Practitioners will benefit from this model, because it enables them to better set up and develop ITG, as well as to understand and promote its potential impact.

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Urbach, N., Buchwald, A. and Ahlemann, F. (2013) Understanding IT Governance Success and its Impact: Results from an Interview Study, Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2013), June 5-8, Utrecht, The Netherlands. (Link)

Digital natives – the generation for whom the Internet has always existed – have embraced the medium as one of choice. They use social computing applications as a medium for many activities, including receiving and giving product advice (ratings, comments), meeting with and talking to friends (social networking, chat), organizing events (social networking), learning (Wikipedia, weblogs), and communication with the general public (Youtube, weblogs). Facebook, a social networking service, has reached an audience of approximately 800 million users; young Iranians organize protests against their government via social networks, while amateur journalists and artists are viewed by millions on Youtube and weblogs. Inspired by these developments, corporations now seek to adopt social computing applications and derive similar benefits for their organizations. However, despite their growing interest, many firms report significant problems with the implementation and acceptance of social computing applications.

In a recent research project we investigated how three companies resolved these issues and improved communication and collaboration by incorporating social computing applications into their intranets. Based on the insights gathered from the cases, a general process for the adoption of social computing applications is proposed.

According to our process theory, corporate social computing projects start with a need for better communication and/or collaboration between corporate employees, their business units, or even smaller units (1). When such a need becomes obvious to an employee interested in starting a project, resources required to continue have to be mobilized. These resources may often only be obtained by involving the respective management team (2). Consequently, it is often necessary to inform the management of the needs expressed by the employees by engaging them in workshops or informal meetings in order to carry the idea to the next level. To succeed, the innovator(s) has(have) to use hard data to illustrate the communication and/or collaboration deficiencies. In our cases, surveys and interviews were mostly the instrument of choice. After the innovators had convinced the management of the need to implement social computing, the management also demanded an evaluation of the application by a defined group of people (3). Rather than being defined by their skills and positions, this group of people comprises employees who demonstrate a deep interest in social computing: an interest group. When the interest group succeeds in making a compelling case for the introduction of the social computing application (4), the management delivers the necessary resources and legitimizes the project (5). This legitimation empowers decisions and justifies the costs of the upcoming implementation process. As a next step, the IT department is assigned the task of implementing the system from a technical perspective, including its design, security, and access (6). At the same time, the interest group starts creating content to avoid going live without adequate content to illustrate the purpose of the system. Further, the IT department signals the technical availability (7) and the management gives the final permission to go live, while preparing the announcements that will accompany the rollout (8). Going live is accompanied by a great deal of communication from the project team via the intranet, emails, flyers, and other organization communication channels. In addition, training sessions are organized in which the project team demonstrates the new application by illustrating how the system can be used in the daily work environment (9).

The research results have recently been accepted for publication:
Räth, P., Urbach, N., Smolnik, S. and Butler, B. (2012) Corporate Adoption of Social Computing: A Process-Based Analysis, Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research (JITCAR), 14, 2, 3-27. (Link)