Unlike technology users in business organizations, users of personal information technologies are usually not bound to specific products and have the freedom to switch from one product to a substitute. As a unique and widespread product level post-adoption behavior, IT user switching has not garnered sufficient attention in the current literature. Prior research has suggested that a consumer's decision to switch follows careful reasoning on three distinct groups of factors: push, pull, and mooring. Given the highly routinized nature of post-adoption IT use, we draw from research on habit in social psychology and post-adoption user behavior literatures, and argue that users' habit plays a critical role in post-adoption IT switching. Specifically, we posit that the habit of using the incumbent product both contributes to the mooring effects during the formation of intention to switch, and moderates the relationship between intention and switching. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 414 users presented with a choice of switching their Web browsers. Our findings confirm the direct influence of potential switchers' habit on switching intention, and the interaction between habit and switching intention on switching. Our overall model explains 55 percent of total variance in users' intention to switch and 23 percent of total variance in user switching. This study advances the theoretical and empirical understanding of post-adoption technology switching, valuable to both researchers and practitioners.

No abstract

No abstract

This study investigates how a personality trait and expertise affect virtual teams interaction, and how that interaction leads to different levels of performance (e.g., solution quality, solution acceptance, cohesion). Teams have been shown to exhibit constructive, aggressive/defensive, or passive/defensive interaction styles that affect communication and thus team performance by facilitating or hindering the exchange of information among group members. These styles reflect an aggregation of the behaviors exhibited by individual team members, which are rooted in their individual personalities. The effects of interaction style on team performance have been well established in face-to-face and virtual teams. Generally, constructive interaction styles produce positive outcomes whereas passive/defensive styles beget negative ones. Aggressive/defensive teams produce solutions that are correlated with the expertise of those that have wrested control of the group but there is often little support for those solutions. The current work explores how different constellations of extraversion and expertise manifest themselves into group interaction styles and, ultimately, outcomes. The study involves 248 professional managers from executive MBA and professional development programs in 63 virtual teams that performed an intellective task. Results show that expertise and extraversion to be curvilinearly related to group interactions and performance, and high levels of extraversion and higher variations in extraversion between team members lead to less constructive and more passive/defensive interaction styles within teams. Results show that although expertise is the best predictor of task performance, it is primarily group interaction styles that predict contextual outcomes (e.g., solution acceptance, cohesion, effectiveness) in virtual teams.

Purpose -This paper aims to describe how organizational culture is manifested in behavioral norms and expectations, focusing on 12 sets of behavioral norms associated with constructive, passive/ defensive, and aggressive/defensive cultural styles. Design/methodology/approach -The organizational culture inventory, a normed and validated instrument designed to measure organizational culture in terms of behavioral norms and expectations, was used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of culture. Data are summarized from 60,900 respondents affiliated with various organizations that have used the instrument to assess their cultures. Also presented is a brief overview of a practitioner-led assessment of four state government departments. Findings -The results of correlational analyses illustrate the positive impact of constructive cultural styles, and the negative impact of dysfunctional defensive styles, on both the individual-and organizational-level performance drivers. The results clearly link the dysfunctional cultural styles to deficits in operating efficiency and effectiveness. Originality/value -The concept of organizational culture is derived from research in the field of organizational behavior characterized by use of qualitative methods. Yet, one of the most powerful strategies for organizational development is knowledge-based change, an approach that generally relies on the use of quantitative measures. Although both methods share the potential for producing cumulative bodies of information for assessment and theory testing, quantitative approaches may be more practical for purposes of knowledge-based approaches for organizational development generally, and assessing cultural prerequisites for organizational learning and knowledge management specifically.

The current field study took place within a Mexican work setting, consisting of 100 white-collar employees representing a variety of professional job categories. The study investigated the direct effect of the supervisor±employee relationship (leader±member exchange) quality and group acceptance on employees' propensity to engage in activities beyond their formal work roles (extra-role behavior). The mediating influences of the employees' job satisfaction level and organizational commitment were also taken into consideration when accounting for extra-role behavior. Results suggest that relationships Mexican employees share with their supervisor have a direct impact on their extra-role behavior. Social exchange, key to both extra-role behavior and leader±member exchange, is proposed as the operating mechanism associating the two constructs. Results also indicate that organizational commitment plays a partial mediating role between leader±member exchange and extra-role behavior.

Virtual teams are typically made up of geographically dispersed experts, supported by computer-based communication technologies. Though increasingly popular this is still a relatively unstudied organizational form. Virtual team membership is typically based solely on needed expertise; the teams rarely have any history of interaction and their performance potential is unknown. Research shows that teams exhibit constructive, passive, and aggressive interaction styles, which have significant effects on the decisions the teams produce as well as the teams' satisfaction with those decisions. We present managerial tools for the assessment of conventional and virtual team interaction styles. We detail how the tools are used, and we also discuss how the styles manifest in each medium, and their effects. We give suggestions to team managers on how to use the insights the tools provide to manage their virtual teams for optimal performance.

No abstract