Ulrike Schultze, SMU Cox School of Business / Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas)

Towards A Discursive Theory of Social Media Affordances for Identity Work. Of late, there has been considerable interest in the technological affordances of social media (e.g., Jensen and Dyrby 2013; Mesgari and Faraj 2012; Treem and Leonardi 2012). This literature focuses on what the affordances of social media are, leaving unanswered questions of how technology affordances are accomplished, particularly as social – rather than individual – phenomena (Bloomfield et al. 2010). Furthermore, despite the central role identity performance plays in the use of social media (Ellison and boyd 2013), the IS literature on social media has thus far paid little attention to the technology’s action possibilities for identity work. To address these gaps in IS scholarship, we develop a discursive theory of affordances, arguing that discourses operating at the social level play a key role in shaping individual’s behavioral intentions and their perceptions of a technological artifact’s action possibilities. To illustrate this theory, we rely on data collected from a class of social media known as virtual worlds to answer the following research question: How are technological affordances for identity work differentially enacted in virtual worlds? Drawing on extensive qualitative data collected from eight residents in the virtual world Second Life, we explore how the avatar is differentially engaged in identity work based on the discourse shaping virtual world use.

Gilbert Babin, Chercheur du GReSI, HEC Montréal

Providing an Architecture Framework for Cyberjustice. This project aims at developing an Information System Architecture approach to map available the different technologies currently available in the Canadian Civil Justice system and link these technologies to the Civil justice (what), considering the stakeholders (who), the locations of events (where), the timing of events in the process (when), the means used to support the process (how), and the purpose of the system (why). The approach is using the Zackman Framework as a basis. The goal of the approach is to be able to reason about the technology, more specifically to be able to determine to which extent technology supports the civil justice system, in general, and more specifically, access to justice.

Olga Volkoff, Beedie School of Business / Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, B.C.)

A Multilevel Theory of Effective System Use: Insights from the Use of a Community Care E-Health Record System. Outcomes from using information systems can vary widely depending on how effectively they are used.  Nonetheless, past research offers very few insights on what it means to use an information system effectively or how an organization can improve effective use.  What little research exists has been confined to a single level of analysis (e.g., individual or group).  We provide the first multilevel account, derived from a qualitative case study of the use of an electronic health record system in community care, coupled with insights from research on effective use and affordances.  Our findings confirm the importance of some aspects of effective use, such as ensuring data accuracy, highlighted in prior single-level theories, but they also reveal new aspects needed in a multilevel setting, especially the role of consistency and the role of reflective practice in achieving the ‘right’ accuracy and consistency.  Our theory contributes by providing the first multilevel account of what effective use looks like in an organization and by extending research on effective use, affordance actualization, and multilevel theory.

Marie-Claude Trudel, Chercheure du GResI*, et Guilherme Lerch Lunardi, Chercheur postdoctoral*, Chaire de gestion stratégique des T.I., *HEC Montréal

Synthesizing Information Systems Knowledge: A Review of Current Practices. The primary goal of this article is to describe the current practices in terms of knowledge synthesis in the IS field. To do so, we developed a taxonomy which we anticipate will serve as a valuable source for those conducting, evaluating or interpreting reviews and then provided a descriptive insight into the most common review methods found in the IS field. Our analysis revealed much inconsistency in the labels used by IS authors to qualify their reviews. We also discuss how to evaluate the quality of stand-alone reviews and suggest that such assessment involves two dimensions, namely, rigor and relevance.

Camille Grange, Chercheure du GReSI, HEC Montréal

Properties and Effects of Consumers’ Information Seeking Patterns in Online Social Shopping Networks. In this presentation, we will describe and report the preliminary results of a study that investigates consumers’ use and evaluation of online social shopping environments. The study consists in an online experiment in which we invited Vancouver residents to connect to a mock website designed to mimic a restaurant review site integrated to Facebook. We manipulated the website’s design such that  a random set of participants could conduct their restaurant search task using their friendship network, while the others could not, and collected data on how subjects navigated the website and how they felt about their experience.

Radhika Santhanam, Price College of Business / University of Oklahoma (Norman, Oklahoma)

Is it the sine qua non for reducing the bordedom of e-learning? Gamification, the use of game elements and game principles in non-entertainment settings, is becoming increasingly popular as organizations use it sell products and services, to affect desired behaviors, and to create fun and engagement in everyday activities. But gamification is not as simple as just adding badges and leaderboards within a task. It is about understanding the underlying task to identify what types of game elements could create engaging experiences and lead to desired outcomes in a specific domain. In this presentation, I will provide a commentary on the present status of gamification, and describe the experiences of me and my colleagues in our attempts to gamify an e-learning program. We examined the process of learning via an e-learning platform and made decisions regarding the appropriate gamification approach. We then gamified an e-learning program and collected data on a group of participants learning database skills. Findings speak to the value of gamification of e-learning but also highlight practical issues that have to be addressed in designing these programs. Building on these experiences, we use a design science paradigm to develop a gamified shell for e-learning where we can test the efficacy of various game elements in an e-learning environment.

Atelier de préparation pour la conférence HICSS

Henri Barki* et Ann-Frances Cameron*, *Chercheurs du GReSI – HEC Montréal

A multi-method exploration the effects of multicommunicating during one-on-one and group meetings.
Study 1:
 MC during one-on-one meetings: Given the changes in communication patterns that are caused by the increased prevalence of ICT such as mobile email and text-enabled devices, how analysts work and communicate has also been changing in important ways. One such practice that has become widespread is multicommunicating (MC), or being engaged in multiple overlapping conversations at the same time. One example of MC is an analyst checking emails and messages on a smart phone while in a meeting with a user. Integrating two streams of research, namely research on user-analyst relationships and multicommunicating, the present study examined the influence of MC behaviors of analysts during meetings with users. The study employed an experimental approach using data collected from a sample of current or potential users who responded to a questionnaire after watching a video vignette that was randomly assigned based on a 2X2X2 factorial design. The results suggest that perceptions of analyst incivility increased when the analyst engaged in MC, when the analyst appeared distracted during the meeting, or when the analyst used an audible ICT when MC. These perceptions of analyst incivility in turn decreased the respondent’s willingness to help the analyst in a future task. Qualitative results are also discussed.

Study 2: MC during group meetings: Being engaged in additional parallel communications during group meetings is an increasingly prevalent organizational behavior to which researchers are turning their attention. We introduce multicommunicating during group meetings as a meta-phenomenon and propose a classification scheme through which we classify this phenomenon into six different categories. We conducted six interviews with professionals engaged in multicommunicating behavior to develop an understanding of the outcomes associated with the six different types. Finally, a large-scale survey was performed to empirically examine the effects of these six different types.

Olivier Caya*, Université de Sherbrooke, et Alain Pinsonneault*, Université McGill, *Chercheurs du GReSI

Virtual Teams Desperately Seeking Performance:  A Knowledge Integration Perspective. In today’s global work context, organizations are increasingly using virtual teams (VTs) in order to access and harness the specialized knowledge of their employees across geographical and temporal boundaries. But the mere presence of specialized knowledge within VTs is not sufficient to guarantee their performance. Virtual teams must find ways to ensure that the knowledge of their members is integrated effectively at the team level in order to successfully perform their task. However, the phenomenon of knowledge integration in VTs lacks theoretical development and empirical coverage, and much equivocality persists in terms of the key drivers of knowledge integration in such teams. To deal with this gap, we develop a model of information technology (IT)-enabled knowledge integration in VTs derived from Robert Grant’s (1996) knowledge-based theory and complemented by literature on coordination in work units. The model is tested with 540  individuals working in 75 knowledge-based VTs in the IT consulting industry. Consistent with the premises onf the knowledge-based theory, results indicate that knowledge integration is a strong driver of VT performance (both efficiency and effectiveness). We also found that the use of IT to enact one-to-one information sharing between VT members can harm knowledge integration at the team level, while the use of IT to enable coordination behaviors involving all team members simultaneously are most effective. Finally, the empirical evidence suggests that the development of common knowledge between members of VTs act as a powerful tacit integration mechanisms, thereby complementing the effect of IT on knowledge integration. The study has implications for research on knowledge management in virtual teams, shared cognition, and electronic collaboration.

Sandy Staples, Queen’s University (Kingston, Ont.)

The Governance and Control of Open Source Software Projects. A comprehensive set of governance mechanisms and dimensions were investigated to identify combinations of mechanisms that are effectively used together in on-going volunteer-based Open Source Software (OSS) projects. Three configurations were found: Defined Community, Open Community, and Authoritarian Community. Defined Community governance had the strongest coordination and project climate and had the most extensive use of outcome, behaviour and clan control mechanisms (controller-driven). The controls in the Defined Community governance configuration appear to effectively enable open, coordinated contribution and participation from a wide variety of talented developers (one of the virtues of open source development), while managing the development process and outcomes. The combination of control modes found in OSS projects is different from those reported in the literature for internal or outsourced Information Systems Development projects. This could be due to unique features of OSS projects, such as volunteer participation and the controller being part of the development team.

Atelier de préparation pour soumission de communications à la conférence ICIS 2013

François-Xavier de Vaujany, Université Paris-Dauphine (Paris, France)

Information Technology performativity in the pre-adoption phase: why tradeshows, industry and society matter. Performativity is at the heart of numerous works in management and organization studies. In this article, we focus on the way that information technologies are performed through discourses during their pre-adoption phase. During this phase, organizations have very little information and experience in regards to IT, which subsequently appears as a highly abstract and equivocal artifact. As such, during this phase it is all the more important to imbue IT with both a shape and power, i.e. to materialize what it is and what can be done with it. Through three case studies of IT tradeshows, we explore the modalities of IT performativity in regards to practitioners seeking information about the new technologies that they are looking to adopt. Our findings reveal that (i) performing IT is a key strategic stake for all external stakeholders of the industry, (ii) that modes of IT performativity are adapted to each industry (focusing either on typical material artifacts, processes and activities, or integrative managerial concepts) and (iii) that the felicity conditions of IT performativity differ from those described in the literature on performativity (i.e. they are much more “liquid”). In continuation to these three findings, we elaborate a theoretical framework about IT performativity at the pre-adoption stage, which combines three levels of analysis (society, industry, organizations) and three key components (discourses, IT performativity, material and symbolic artifacts). We then discuss the contributions and limitations of this study and avenues for further research.

Ritu Agarwal, University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)

Vocal Minority and Silent Majority: How do Online Ratings Reflect Population Perceptions of Quality? There is broad agreement among policy makers and consumer groups that greater transparency in healthcare will improve the quality and reduce the costs of care delivery.  However, until recently consumers had limited avenues for discerning the quality of physicians, even though there is evidence that variation in quality across individual physicians can be substantial.  Fueled by the wide spread availability of the Web 2.0 technologies, online physician ratings have begun to gain momentum in recent years, much like the growth of consumer review systems in other domains such as movies and electronics.  Evidence also suggests that the physician ratings are being used by patients.  However, despite the increasing popularity of online physician ratings, there is substantial controversy surrounding their value as a signal of physician quality.  Professional societies such as the American Medical Association and some state governments have expressed concerns that these ratings merely reflect unhappy patients’ opinions and may ruin physicians’ reputation.  Because the online ratings are generated by anonymous users voluntarily, there is a likelihood of substantial bias associated with this self-selection process, which can be detrimental to the informational value of these online ratings for consumers’ choice processes.

Benoit Aubert, Chercheur du GReSI, HEC Montréal

Intensity of IT use and Innovation. In an increasingly computerized world, information and communications technologies (ICT) can be used to foster innovation. Some firms have achieved remarkable innovations using ICT. They access new markets, change the way their products are sold, digitize services, etc. This study assesses to what extent the intensity of use of ICT influences innovation intensity. Data was collected from 1800 organizations in Canada. Results show that ICT intensity does influence innovation. They also suggests that ICT has a stronger role (with respect to innovation) in organizations that have rigid structures than in organizations that have flexible structures.

Chitu Okoli, Concordia University

The Value of Theory-Mining Reviews: A Citation Analysis. Literature reviews have a wide variety of purposes, with varying usefulness for the research community. We have identified a particular type of literature review that we call a theory-mining review, a review that explicitly extracts and synthesizes theoretical concepts and preferably also theoretical relationships. Our citation analysis on almost 100 peer-reviewed literature reviews in information systems finds that theory-mining reviews have been more highly cited than other kinds of literature reviews, whether authored by senior or by junior scholars, and whether or not published in top journals. The finding that theory-mining reviews, which explicitly offer theoretical contributions, are more highly cited suggests that more literature reviews ought to a theory-mining orientation.