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This paper applies upper echelons theory to investigate whether chief information officers (CIOs) and boards of directors affect the development of AI orientation, which represents firms’ overall strategic direction and goals regarding the introduction and application of artificial intelligence (AI)technology. We tested our model using a dataset drawn from 1,454 publicly listed firms in China. Our findings show that the presence of a CIO positively influences AI orientation and that board educational diversity, R&D experience, and AI experience positively moderate the CIO’s effect on AI orientation. Our post hoc analysis further demonstrates that these board characteristics represent contingencies that impact AI orientation but not conventional IT orientation. This paper contributes to the upper echelons literature and IT management research by offering contextualized arguments that explain new business and IT strategies such as AI orientation. Further, our findings suggest important implications about how to build top management teams and boards capable of effectively developing AI orientations

Organizations use IT to navigate uncertain, rapidly changing, and competitive environments. To achieve this, understanding the implications of the interplay among firm strategy, information technology (IT), and IT governance is critical to understanding firm success. In this work, we investigate the synergistic effects of business–IT strategic alignment (hereafter “alignment”), misalignment, and effectiveness of IT governance on firm performance among organizations with proactive/first-mover strategic orientations (hereafter “proactive organizations”). Using data from 87 organizations, we tested a moderated polynomial model that predicts alignment and misalignment’s effect on firm performance. The results indicated that effective IT governance in proactive organizations positively moderated the curvilinear relationship between alignment, misalignment, and firm performance. This paper contributes to research by offering a curvilinear and three-dimensional representation of the relationship between alignment, misalignment, and firm performance and by illustrating the moderating facets of IT governance. Moreover, for practice, it sheds light on the effects of misalignment, suggesting that proactive organizations with more effective IT governance are not likely to struggle with mild misalignment but may suffer more deleterious effects from severe misalignment. Our research sheds light on the conditions under which IT governance and alignment influence firm performance.

In this work, we investigate how social media has changed hiring processes, an important internal activity of organizations. Specifically, we probe how viewing job-relevant and job-irrelevant social media content influences hiring managers’ ratings of job applicants. To do so, we conducted an experiment that manipulated the presence of social media content on political issues and job-relevant information as well as the social media platforms on which they appear. We balanced job-relevant and job-irrelevant content because we were interested in assessing whether information about political issues continued to have effects even in the presence of information relating to a job applicant’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. We found that social media posts that convey information about political issues do have effects, even in the presence of job-relevant information. We also found that, for some issues, the source of social media content matters, with platform effects impacting the assessment of job applicants. This work has timely implications, suggesting that managers be made aware that both social media content and the platform on which it is viewed can contaminate hiring processes. We suggest a need for future research at the intersection between social media and hiring policies.

Creative information technology usage by employees is the critical link between business technology investments and competitive advantage in a digital economy. However, to realize anticipated benefits, organizational leaders need a richer understanding of what drives individuals’ innovation with incumbent organizational technologies. In support of that aim, this study theorized the processes by which a new concept in IS research, IT identity, motivates different forms of IT usage in the post-adoption context. We mapped these processes to two variance models and validated IT identity’s influences for two different technologies. For theory, our results demonstrate IT identity’s role as a key determinant of IT feature and exploratory usage, refine understanding of the nomological net of IT use, and create new opportunities to understand individuals’ interactions with IT in the post-adoption context. For practice, this study offers actionable suggestions for how organizational leaders can encourage employees to leverage IT more effectively in their work. In doing so, this study opens the door for future investigations into the reciprocal relationship between individual IT usage and organizational and/or societal outcomes.

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) provides more predictive power within the IS context than general trait mindfulness.

Research examining the relationship between IT-business strategic alignment (hereafter referred to as alignment) and firm performance (hereafter referred to as performance) has produced apparently conflicting findings (i.e., an alignment paradox). To examine the alignment paradox, we conducted a meta-analysis that probed the interrelationships between alignment, performance, and context constructs. We found the alignment dimensions (intellectual, operational, and cross-domain) demonstrate unique relationships with the different performance types (financial performance, productivity, and customer benefit) and with many of the other constructs in alignment's nomological network. All mean corrected correlations between dimensions of alignment and dependent variables were positive and most of the credibility interval values in these analyses were also positive. Overall, the evidence gathered from the extant literature suggests there is not much of an alignment paradox. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the relationships between alignment and performance outcomes and offering insight into sources of inconsistencies in alignment research. By doing so, this paper lays a foundation for more consistent treatment of alignment in future IT research.

Grounded in the theory of trying, this study examines the influence of the work environment and gender on trying to innovate with information technology. The study extends the innovation diffusion literature by offering a theory-driven explanation for examining trying to innovate with IT and a parsimonious measure for this construct. Drawing on the theory of reasoned action, we argue that work environment impediments render intentions inadequate for examining post-adoption IT use. Instead of examining intentions, we introduce the goal-based construct of trying to innovate with IT as an appropriate dependent variable for examining post-adoption IT use. Statistical analysis supports the reliability and validity of a parsimonious measure of trying to innovate with IT. The study focuses on two research questions. First, do perceptions of the work environment such as overload and autonomy influence individuals' trying to innovate with IT? Second, does gender influence the relationship between perceptions of the environment and trying to innovate with IT? The model articulates how perceptions of the environment moderated by gender may influence trying to innovate with IT. Results provide evidence that overload and autonomy are antecedents to trying to innovate with information technology. Further, findings confirm that autonomy interacts with overload to determine trying to innovate with IT and that these relationships vary by gender. Implications for research and practice are offered.

To better understand how individual differences influence the use of information technology (IT), this study models and tests relationships among dynamic, IT-specific individual differences (i.e., computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety), stable, situation-specific traits (i.e., personal innovativeness in IT) and stable, broad traits (i.e., trait anxiety and negative affectivity). When compared to broad traits, the model suggests that situation-specific traits exert a more pervasive influence on IT situation-specific individual differences. Further, the model suggests that computer anxiety mediates the influence of situation-specific traits (i.e., personal innovativeness) on computer self-efficacy. Results provide support for many of the hypothesized relationships. From a theoretical perspective, the findings help to further our understanding of the nomological network among individual differences that lead to computer self-efficacy. From a practical perspective, the findings may help IT managers design training programs that more effectively increase the computer self-efficacy of users with different dispositional characteristics.