Escaping ‘localisms’ in IT sourcing: tracing changes in institutional logics in an Italian firm

Abstract

Organizations are limited in their choices by the institutional environment in which they operate. This is particularly true for IT sourcing decisions that go beyond cost considerations and are constrained by traditions, geographical location, and social networks. This article investigates how a company can disentangle itself from the constraints of the institutional environment. We do so drawing on a longitudinal case study of an Italian SME active in the steel industry that successfully changed its institutionally sound, but increasingly inefficient, IT sourcing practice. Our main result suggests that by attending steadily to institutional logics, organizations can become selective in how the institutional environment influences them and act more purposefully in their decisions. In particular, through the creation of companywide IT management competencies and targeted hiring practices, organizations can strike a balance between the different institutional logics guiding IT sourcing decisions and eventually shift from the dominant logic of localism to a logic of market efficiency. This change does not depend from a choice but rather builds on a process through which IT management competences are slowly integrated in the organization.

Knowledge Sharing on Enterprise Social Media: Practices to Cope With Institutional Complexity

“…• Reviewability (Faraj et al, 2011) • Persistence • Metavoicing (Majchrzak et al, 2013) • Conceptual • Conceptual • Conceptual While the affordances help us to understand the potential role of technology for knowledge sharing, studies on affordances do not take into account the wider institutional context that influences users' interaction with a technology. In line with the growing body of research on institutional theory and IS (Ang & Cummings, 1997;Berente & Yoo, 2011;Currie & Guah, 2007;Mola & Carugati, 2011;Seidel & Berente, 2013), we take the position that particular uses of a technology are influenced by institutional forces applicable across various contexts. In order to fully understand users' knowledge sharing practices on ESM, it is essential to include an institutional logics perspective as it allows us to explain how affordances are engaged in practice.…”

My choice, your problem? Mandating IT use in large organisational networks

“…Building on this boundary‐spanning role in the investigated institutional context, the contrast between the current and desired states was important and multifaceted prompting a misalignment of interests (Mola & Carugati, ). The misalignment was a consequence of both the technological change and the very engine of the change effort, namely a natural state of affairs in complex organisations with multiple, coexisting interests (Battilana & Dorado, ).…”

Clinical managers' identity at the crossroad of multiple institutional logics in it innovation: The case study of a health care organization in England

“…With a few exceptions (Mola & Carugati, 2012), most research in Information Systems (IS) shows how tension between logics persists across time (eg, Hayes & Rajao, 2011), which plunges IT-enabled transformations in a precarious equilibrium that is continually contested and renegotiated. For example, as an attempt to compromise between conflicting logics, a new technology can be readapted to conform to the practices and norms of the implementation context (Carugati, Fernández, Mola, & Rossignoli, 2018;Davidson & Chismar, 2007).…”

“…An example is guidelines of clinical safety established by knowledge elites (eg, NICE) as a complex form of discipline and "self-surveillance" (Waring, 2014) and used by clinical managers to evaluate an IT innovation. The interpretation of evidence is both contextual and contested (Fitzgerald, Ferlie, & Hawkins, 2003) due to the role of institutional logics in filtering actors' perceptions about the risk and effectiveness of IT investments (Mola & Carugati, 2012). The case study showed that from the point of view of a medical professional, the apparent lack of evidence of clinical effectiveness and, most of all, clinical safety is strongly related to workload concerns and the integrity of medical practice.…”

“…For example, in our case study clinical managers (or administrative elites) had to consider professional guidelines from knowledge elites and concerns about the integrity of clinical practice from rank and files before making IT-related decisions. Therefore, whereas recent research points to the need for organizations to include professional values and cultures in support of digital transformation (Tumbas, Berente, & vom Brocke, J., 2018), the internal structures through which certain professions regulate their own work makes this task more difficult and can raise barriers to the boundary spanning function of IT systems across occupational groups (Mola & Carugati, 2012).…”