The 10 most-cited articles in MIS Quarterly, 2018

The paper develops a needs–affordances–features (NAF) perspective on social media use which posits that individuals’ psychological needs motivate their use of social media applications to the extent to which these applications provide affordances that satisfy these needs. Our theoretical development builds upon two psychological theories, namely self-determination and psychological ownership, to identify five psychological needs (needs for autonomy, relatedness, competence, having a place, and self-identity), that we posit are particularly pertinent to social media use. According to NAF, these psychological needs will motivate use of those social media applications that provide salient affordances to fulfill these needs. We identify such affordances through a comprehensive review of the literature and of social media applications and put forth propositions that map the affordances to the psychological needs that they fulfill. Our theory development generates important implications. First, it has implications for social media research in that it provides an overarching comprehensive…

Information systems security (ISS) behavioral research has produced different models to explain security policy compliance. This paper (1) reviews 11 theories that have served the majority of previous information security behavior models, (2) empirically compares these theories (Study 1), (3) proposes a unified model, called the unified model of information security policy compliance (UMISPC), which integrates elements across these extant theories, and (4) empirically tests the UMISPC in a new study (Study 2), which provided preliminary empirical support for the model. The 11 theories reviewed are (1) the theory of reasoned action, (2) neutrali- zation techniques, (3) the health belief model, (4) the theory of planned behavior, (5) the theory of interpersonal behavior, (6) the protection motivation theory, (7) the extended protection motivation theory, (8) deterrence theory and rational choice theory, (9) the theory of self-regulation, (10) the extended parallel processing model, and (11) the control balance theory. The UMISPC is an initial step toward empirically examining the…

Partial least squares (PLS) is one of the most popular statistical techniques in use in the Information Systems field. When applied to data originating from a common factor model, as is often the case in the discipline, PLS will produce biased estimates. A recent development, consistent PLS (PLSc), has been introduced to correct for this bias. In addition, the common practice in PLS of comparing the ratio of an estimate to its standard error to a t distribution for the purposes of statistical inference has also been challenged. We contribute to the practice of research in the IS discipline by providing evidence of the value of employing bootstrap confidence intervals in conjunction with PLSc, which is a more appropriate alternative than PLS for many of the research scenarios that are of interest to the field. Such evidence is direly needed before a complete approach to the estimation of SEM that relies on both PLSc and bootstrap CIs can be widely adopted. We also provide recommendations for researchers on the use of confidence intervals with PLSc.

In the context of software platforms, we examine how cross-side network effects (CNEs) on different platform sides (app-side and user-side) are temporally asymmetric, and how these CNEs are influenced by the platform’s governance policies. Informed by a perspective of value creation and capture, we theorize how the app-side and the user-side react to each other with distinct value creation/capture processes, and how these processes are influenced by the platform’s governance policies on app review and platform updates. We use a time-series analysis to empirically investigate the platform ecosystem of a leading web browser. Our findings suggest that while the growth in platform usage results in long-term growth in both the number and variety of apps, the growth in the number of apps and the variety of apps only leads to short-term growth in platform usage. We also find that long app review time weakens the long-term CNE of the user-side on the app-side, but not the short-term CNE of the app-side on the user-side. Moreover, we find that frequent platform updates weaken the CNEs of…

The life-like collaborative potential offered by virtual worlds (VWs) has sparked significant interest for companies to experiment with VWs in order to organize convenient, cost-effective virtual global workplaces. Despite the initial hype, recent years have witnessed a rather stagnant use of VWs for collaboration in organizations. Previous research recognizes that the inherent uncertainties within the VW environment are factors limiting their utilization by businesses. Hence, grounding this research in uncertainty reduction theory (URT), we aim to understand the modalities and mechanisms for mitigating the uncertainties and fostering user trust within VWs so that they can be effectively utilized as a workplace collaboration tool. With this end in view, we propose contextualizing and extending McKnight et al.’s (2002) institutional trust framework to the context of VWs by examining the significant role that social presence has in influencing the efficacy of the institution-based trust-building factors of situational normality and structural assurance in VWs. Using a sequential mixed…

Work interruptions have made significant inroads into the knowledge workers’ nonwork domain, in large part due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices that blur the work–nonwork boundaries by enabling work interruptions anywhere and at any time. We examine the effects of such technology-mediated work-related interruptions that occur during one’s time off on both work and nonwork outcomes. Leveraging theoretical perspectives from interruption, work–life interface, and conservation of resources, we conceptualize both positive and negative effects of such interruptions on behavioral and psychological outcomes. We identify three mediating mechanisms via which these effects occur: interruption overload and psychological transition via which negative effects occur and task closure via which positive effects occur. Results reveal significant effects of interruptions on work and nonwork outcomes through the three mediating mechanisms. Although positive effects are observed, the total effects of work-related interruptions are detrimental across both work and nonwork outcomes, with the…

Although mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a common strategy to reduce costs and pursue growth, the variance in returns from M&A is very high. This research examines how information technology (IT) infrastructure flexibility affects M&A. We use a combination of secondary as well as matched-pair survey data from 100 midsize firms in Spain to investigate this relationship. The empirical analysis suggests that IT infrastructure flexibility affects M&A through two key pathways: (1) a flexible IT infrastructure facilitates the development of business flexibility that provides the responsiveness to seize M&A opportunities and make acquisitions, and (2) a flexible IT infrastructure facilitates the development of post-M&A IT integration capability that provides the control to integrate the IT and business resources of the acquired firm and realize the economic benefits from M&A.

Mindfulness is an important emerging topic. Individual mindfulness in IT use has not been studied systematically. Through three programmatic empirical studies, this paper develops a scale for IT mindfulness and tests its utility in the post-adoption system use context. Study 1 develops a measure of IT mindfulness and evaluates its validity and reliability. Study 2 employs a laboratory experiment to examine whether IT mindfulness can be manipulated and whether its influence is consistent across technological contexts. Study 3 places IT mindfulness in a nomological network and tests the construct’s utility for predicting more active system use (e.g., trying to innovate and deep structure usage) as well as more automatic system use (e.g., continuance intention). Our primary contribution includes the development and validation of a scale for IT mindfulness. In addition, we demonstrate that IT mindfulness (1) differs from important existing concepts such as cognitive absorption, (2) can be manipulated, (3) more closely relates to active system use than automatic system use, and (4)…

IT governance describes the decision rights and accountability framework used to ensure the alignment of IT-related activities with the organization’s strategy and objectives. Conversely, IT consumerization refers to the process whereby the changing practices and expectations of consumers influence the IT-related activities of workers and managers in organizations. We propose that IT consumerization not only challenges the foundations of IT governance but ultimately also transforms it. To explore this research problem, we utilize the punctuated equilibrium theory and a case study of IT consumerization and the transformation of IT governance in a large global bank. Our findings suggest that the widespread adoption of digital technology in everyday life leads to “everyone’s IT,” which is a new set of shared beliefs among consumers that highlights democra-tized access and individualized use of IT. As everyone’s IT beliefs begin to alter the IT-related activities of workers, the result is IT governance misalignments that ultimately lead to a punctuated transformation of IT governance…

User contribution is critical to online communities but also difficult to sustain given its public goods nature. This paper studies the design of IT artifacts to motivate voluntary contributions in online communities. We propose a dynamic approach, which allows the effect of motivating mechanisms to change across users over time. We characterize the dynamics of user contributions using a hidden Markov model (HMM) with latent motivation states under the public goods framework. We focus on three motivating mechanisms on transitioning users between the latent states: reciprocity, peer recognition, and self-image. Based on Bayesian estimation of the model with user-level panel data, we identify three motivation states (low, medium, and high), and show that the motivating mechanisms, implemented through various IT artifacts, could work differently across states. Specifically, reciprocity is only effective to transition users from low to medium motivation state, whereas peer recognition can boost all users to higher states. And self-image shows no effect when a user is already in high…