PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the use of social media platforms compared to IT-enabled communication in the context of dispersed teams.Design/methodology/approachWe draw on the millefeuille theory to develop a model that examines the impact of multiple media use (namely the millefeuille effect) on team performance. Data were collected from 70 dispersed teams.FindingsWe showed dispersed teams are more likely to improve their performance when relying on diverse media, including social media platforms and other IT-enabled communication. We provide empirical evidence that the millefeuille effect does not necessarily impede performance.Originality/valueAn increasing number of companies are implementing social media platforms as part of their media portfolio in addition to the already existing IT-enabled communication, such as email. However, we lack understanding of how the use of different media impacts team performance. Drawing on the millefeuille theory, this study investigates the use of social media platforms in dispersed teams by examining how their use with other IT-enabled communication can lead to team performance. This research introduces and differentiates two measures of the millefeuille effect to explain the different impacts of the millefeuille effect: millefeuille size (the number of non-overlapping media used) and millefeuille diversity (the variety of media used).

Knowledge is an invaluable resource and a key to organisational success. To leverage this resource adequately, organisations must encourage their employees to share what they know with their peers. Enterprise social media (ESM) has emerged as an ideal venue for achieving this goal, and numerous studies have examined the drivers of work-related knowledge contributions on these platforms. The present study contributes to this body of research by examining a prevalent yet underexplored form of knowledge sharing that often occurs on ESM: nonwork-related knowledge contributions. We argue that contrary to a commonly held belief, this presumably hedonic employee behaviour can benefit organisations through its spillover effect on the work domain. In other words, we argue that nonwork-related knowledge contributions on ESM can foster work-related ones. Building on social exchange theory and on the associative-propositional evaluation model in social psychology, we also show that the employee-employer (EE) relationship-conceptualised in terms of perceived organisational support and perceived employee psychological safety-moderates the relationship between the two forms of knowledge contributions. The analysis of field data collected from 269 employees of a French e-commerce company confirmed that nonwork-related knowledge contributions are positively associated with work-related ones and that this positive association is moderated by the EE relationship. We discuss the theoretical contributions of our results and explain key managerial implications for organisations hoping to reap the benefits of ESM in a sustainable way.

Information Technology (IT) has rarely been considered as an intentional force behind an organizational culture change. Still, changing organizational culture is a puzzle that continues to mystify and attract scholarly attention. In this research, we use a rich inductive study of an organization attempting to use social media to drive an organizational culture change. We induce new theory at the intersection of research on organizational culture change and technology. Taking a cultural toolkit perspective, our emergent theory breaks new ground by revealing that organizational leaders often are stuck attempting to introduce a new cultural toolkit but having to catalyze the transformation to this new toolkit by reactivating the existing toolkit. As a consequence, change generates a confluence of two toolkits leading to mixed outcomes: infixing where the new toolkit’s resources become a significant part of the existing toolkit, inlaying where the new toolkit exists as a tool and not a legitimate part of the culture, and annealing where the old toolkit becomes hardened and more salient. Our results help to resolve longstanding puzzles around success and failure of technology in driving organizational culture change and repositions cultural toolkits as an outcome of change.

Scholars and practitioners increasingly emphasize the role of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) in transforming organizations. By enabling networking across boundaries, knowledge sharing and swift collaboration, it can be used as a lever for changing the shared assumptions about work: organizational culture. This study investigates how employees made sense of paradoxical organizational cultures when their company harnessed ESM to drive cultural change. Using grounded theory, we conducted a 22month long case study of a multinational company that introduced ESM in the workplace as an enabler of a culture change. We uncovered the paradoxes that impeded the hoped-for cultural change. In this Research-In-Progress, we show the details associated with one of the three key paradoxes that emerged from our findings that is flattening the organization while maintaining the hierarchy.

The relationship between digital transformation and organizational agility is not well-understood with contradictory results. This paper aims at untangling this contradiction by focusing on one specific component of the digital transformation which consists on competitive intelligence (that we label digital transformation intelligence (DTI)). Through an exploratory study that examines the practices of 78 companies, we distinguished different practice levels of DTI and demonstrate the extent to which they are related to organizational agility. Our theoretical contributions are twofold. First, based on the literature related to competitive intelligence and digital transformation, we put forward digital transformation intelligence and distinguish three lenses to examine DTI practices. Second, we highlight the relationships between DTI practices and organizational agility.

Les Réseaux Sociaux d’Entreprises (RSE) ont connu un récent essor et sont de plus en plus présentés comme un alternatif à l’usage de l’email. Malgré l’intérêt croissant pour ce nouveau medium, notre connaissance est encore limitée quant à l’intégration du RSE dans l’ensemble du portefeuille des moyens de communication disponibles ainsi qu’à sa capacité à remplacer l’usage de l’email. À travers notre approche enracinée et notre étude de cas réalisée dans une multinationale spécialisée dans les produits de beauté et le bien-être, nous avons mis en évidence que le RSE se superpose aux médias existants, formant ainsi un effet millefeuille. En adoptant une approche enracinée, nous avons expliqué l’effet millefeuille dans le cas spécifique du RSE vs email et proposé une version révisée de la théorie du millefeuille. Nous montrons que l’effet millefeuille résulte de la négociation des fonctionnalités matérielles du RSE ainsi que celles de l’email. Cette négociation se fait en tenant compte des normes de communication et du contexte d’utilisation des TI. Nous mettons en évidence l’intérêt d’un réel engagement des managers dans l’utilisation du RSE qui va au-delà du simple parrainage du nouveau médium. À travers cet article, nous proposons une version révisée de la théorie du millefeuille en mettant en évidence trois perspectives théoriques : il s’agit des fonctionnalités matérielles du portefeuille des médias, les normes de communication et enfin le contexte d’utilisation des TI. Nous contribuons à la littérature en SI en proposant une version révisée de la théorie du millefeuille qui intègre la perspective de l’affordance. Nous mettons ainsi en évidence que la prise en compte des fonctionnalités matérielles des médias constituant le portefeuille des moyens de communication et comment celles-ci sont appropriées par les utilisateurs, permet une meilleure compréhension de l’effet millefeuille. Notre article permet également de mettre en avant des recommandations managériales pour aider les managers à mieux faire face à la multiplication des médias disponibles et limiter ainsi les risques liés à l’effet millefeuille.

Extensive research in the Information Systems field has already advanced our understanding of the advantages, the effects and the challenges associated with online ties in online social networks at the workplace. However, we still know little about the situation when additional forms of ties – offline ties – overlap with online ties in online networks enabled by the use of enterprise social media. Relying on the methods behind social network analysis and using the theories of social networks, we develop a measure of congruence between two networks of offline and online ties in order to examine the impact of their congruence on employee outcomes that we label network congruence. We argue that understanding the network congruence effect on employee outcomes is critical because employees’ online ties do not operate in vacuum and because of their consequences on the long term success of enterprise social media. To test our hypotheses, we used field data from 1731 employees of a large international cosmetic company spread over 29 countries in four continents. We found that network congruence is significantly and positively associated with employee outcomes out of the use of enterprise social media. Our results revealed also that users who have a higher outdegree centrality, higher private social media experience and distant from the headquarter enjoy better outcomes associated with the use of enterprise social media. Our work provides three main theoretical contributions. First, we demonstrate that offline ties complement online ties as their structural congruent effect leads to greater benefits than those derived from online ties alone. Second, our work contributes to the current debate on the micro-foundations of organizational social networks by showing that online social networks are not only shaped by actors’ structural positions but that combined actors’ individual characteristics and attributes affect employee outcomes from online social networks.

While the IS literature offers rich insights into the kinds, causes and consequences of unethical information technology use (UITU), we know little about the degree to which legal intervention may mitigate UITU. Our research aims at understanding how legal intervention could mitigate UITU by influencing the cost-benefit analysis in determining the decision to commit such unethical use of IT. Our contributions are twofold. First, we provide testable propositions on the role of legal intervention. Second, we offer an innovative take on intervention – conceived as a multi-mechanism process that adapts to UITU as well as to the way IT users negotiate the IT artifact.

En dépit de l’intérêt croissant des chercheurs SI aux systèmes inter-organisationnels tels que l’échange de données électronique (EDI) et les systèmes de gestion de la chaîne logistique (SGCL), peu de recherches se sont intéressées aux enchères électroniques inversées (EEI), un système d’information inter-organisationnel largement utilisé dans les transactions électroniques inter-firmes. Cette étude a pour objectif de mettre en évidence les déterminants d’usage des EEI suivant la perspective des acheteurs et celle des fournisseurs ainsi que le rôle potentiel du contexte institutionnel à travers une étude de cas réalisée auprès d’un distributeur français. Nous avons mené 122 entretiens semi-directifs en deux phases auprès des différents membres de la communauté inter-organisationnelle (acheteurs, fournisseurs et les initiateurs de la technologie) concernés par l’utilisation des EEI. Nos résultats mettent en évidence des différences entre les acheteurs et les fournisseurs quant à leurs déterminants d’usage. Nous montrons ensuite comment un changement du contexte institutionnel peut impacter l’usage des EEI. En effet, alors que la loi n’a pas permis de remédier au climat de méfiance qui prévaut entre acheteurs et fournisseurs, elle a créé de nouvelles barrières à l’usage pour les acheteurs. Plus particulièrement, les risques de contrôle et de sanction introduits par la loi sont à l’origine de nouvelles barrières à l’utilisation des EEI pour les acheteurs. Nous contribuons à la littérature SI en montrant le rôle des capacités organisationnelles à influencer l’usage. Alors que le rôle déterminant du contexte institutionnel pour expliquer l’usage a été largement reconnu dans la littérature SI, notre compréhension de l’impact du changement du contexte institutionnel sur les déterminants de l’usage est encore limitée. Nous mettons en évidence l’étendue à laquelle la loi peut être à l’origine de la discontinuité d’usage à cause du risque perçu qu’elle introduit.

This study aims to improve our understanding of how the dark side of post-adoptive behavior can lead to IT discontinuance and the role of intervention. To this end, we developed a qualitative case study by investigating the case of Online Reverse Auctions (ORAs) in the context of the retail industry. We identified four forms of IT discontinuance, namely, chosen because of IT artifact, triggered by the unethical use of IT, imposed by intervention, or emergent as the consequences of a change in the stakes

Given the serious concern of the rising levels of Unethical Information Technology Use (UITU), this research aims at exploring the extent to which legal intervention can deal with UITU. To explore the topic, we borrowed the lenses of the Rational Choice Theory (RCT) from the criminology discipline since this provides a useful framework to analyze deviant behaviors such as UITU. Taking into account the exploratory aspect of our research, we adopted a qualitative case study design rooted in an interpretive stance. We studied the effect of the legal intervention on the use of the technology of Online Reverse Auctions (ORAs) notably by interviewing multiple informants such as IT users, IT initiators, legal experts and institutional actors. Our contribution is threefold. Firstly, we show how the legal intervention was able to deal with the dark side of IT use by shuffling the equation of the perceived cost/benefit calculus by potential offenders in cases of UITU. Secondly, we show the extent to which UITU visibility can act as a deterrent mechanism that serves to prevent the dark side of IT use. Thirdly, our research has pointed out that the interplay between users’ adaptation and intervention does not necessarily lead to the desired outcome but can have instead, unexpected results such as a new UITU or IT reduction.

Trust scholars have highlighted both the extent to which the topic of trust repair needs to be a high priority in research agendas and the fact that the role of institutions in trust repair is not yet sufficiently investigated, especially from an empirical perspective. In this article, the authors used an in-depth case study to explore the extent and the circumstances in which a law is interpreted by key stakeholders as contributing to dealing with distrust and/or repairing trust in cases where the latter has been undermined. Analysis of qualitative data extracted largely from sixty-one semi-structured interviews that investigated the perceptions of five groups of informants (buyers, suppliers, technology initiators, key institution representatives and lawyers) enabled us to understand of the conditions in which the law can contribute to trust repair. Our results extend research on trust by showing that the law’s embeddedness, the law’s content and the law’s application are dimensions perceived by actors as influencing the law’s ability to repair trust/deal with distrust by limiting trust-violation events, while trust repair is perceived as an independent dynamic construct that can emerge after distrust has been dealt with.

Despite the widespread diffusion of interorganizational systems (IOS), both retailers and manufacturers suffer significant inaccuracies, flaws, and discrepancies in product information, which undermines the quality of the data they exchange. To remedy this situation, an interorganizational Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) standard has emerged since the beginning the last decade. Initial enthusiasm about this cutting-edge standard notwithstanding, the technology has not reached the adoption breadth predicted by business consulting firms and technology initiators. This research uses sensemaking/sensegiving theoretical lenses to conduct an in-depth, qualitative case study of five groups of stakeholders (retailers, manufacturers, standards setters, data pools, and certified GDSN providers) in an attempt to unravel the barriers to GDSN standard adoption.