A socio‐cognitive interpretation of the potential effects of downsizing on software quality performance

Abstract

Organizational downsizing research indicates that downsizing does not always realize its strategic intent and may, in fact, have a detrimental impact on organizational performance. In this paper, we extend the notion that downsizing negatively impacts performance and argue that organizational downsizing can potentially be detrimental to software quality performance. Using social cognitive theory (SCT), we primarily interpret the negative impacts of downsizing on software quality performance by arguing that downsizing results in a realignment of social networks (environmental factors), thereby affecting the self-efficacy and outcome expectations of a software professional (personal factors), which, in turn, affect software quality performance (outcome of behaviour undertaken). We synthesize relevant literature from the software quality, SCT and downsizing research streams and develop a conceptual model. Two major impacts of downsizing are hypothesized in the conceptual model. First, downsizing destroys formal and informal social networks in organizations, which, in turn, negatively impacts software developers' self-efficacy and outcome expectations through their antecedents, with consequent negative impacts on software development process efficiency and software product quality, the two major components of software quality performance. Second, downsizing negatively affects antecedents of software development process efficiency, namely top management leadership, management infrastructure sophistication, process management efficacy and stakeholder participation with consequent negative impacts on software quality performance. This theoretically grounded discourse can help demonstrate how organizational downsizing can potentially impact software quality performance through key intervening constructs. We also discuss how downsizing and other intervening constructs can be managed to mitigate the negative impacts of downsizing on software quality performance. estimates that an inadequate infrastructure for software testing costs the national economy $59.5 billion annually (Tassey, 2002). The NIST further estimates that with feasible infrastructure improvements, this can be reduced by $22.2 billion, leaving about $37.3 billion in costs to the economy on account of inadequate software testing. Organizational factors such as software developer and end-user issues, rather than technical issues, account for a large portion of these remaining costs (Tassey, 2002). Inadequate software testing infrastructure hinders the detection and correction of bugs, consequently affecting software quality performance. Our reference to software quality performance includes both software product quality as evidenced in terms of product characteristics such as functionality and reliability, and software development process quality as evidenced in process efficiencies, in line with the organizational perspective on software quality performance (Ravichandran & Rai, 2000). The cost to the economy is hence on account of software failing to meet qu...

Examining the Influence of the Social Cognitive Factors and Relative Autonomous Motivations on Employees’ Knowledge Sharing Behaviors

“…SCT provides a comprehensive framework for understanding human behaviors by proposing a triadic relationship among individuals’ attitude, beliefs, cognition, environment, and behaviors (Ambrose & Chiravuri, ). Specifically, SCT explains human behaviors in terms of triadic reciprocal causation, in which behavior, personal/cognitive factors (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, cognition, affect, and conation), and environmental factors operate as interacting determinants that influence one another bidirectionally (Bandura, ; Compeau & Higgins, ), as presented in Figure .…”

“…Additionally, SCT proposes that the two personal/cognitive constructs of self‐efficacy and outcome expectations guide human behaviors (Bandura, ; Hsu et al., ; Ambrose & Chiravuri, ). Self‐efficacy refers to an individual's own judgments regarding his or her capabilities of organizing and executing the courses of action that are required to achieve specific types of performance (Bandura, ).…”

Towards a behavioral software engineering

“…Regarding self efficacy, Ramalingam et al [46] showed that high self efficacy had a positive effect on programming performance, and Ambrose et al [1] argued that downsizing affected self efficacy negatively, which in turn decreased programming performance. Agile development: Only one study related to the individual unit of analysis was found.…”

“…It showed that among managers a high level of self efficacy was positively associated with a high level of agile orientation [50]. 1 Although, we need to consider the overall trend in the number of SE papers to analyze this in more detail. Multi concept studies: This category included papers in which several psychological concepts were studied in relation to each other, in a software engineering context.…”

Editorial

“…The paper of Paul Ambrose and Ananth Chiravuri looks at information systems in the context of downsizing, an unhappy context for much of present‐day organizational life including that of the information systems function. The authors conclude that downsizing should always be avoided, as their studies reinforce the view that downsizing is detrimental at both the organizational and individual levels and, in any case, has not proven to be consistently effective.…”