Stakeholders’ enactment of competing logics in IT governance: polarization, compromise or synthesis?

Abstract

Governing IT while incorporating stakeholders with diverse institutional backgrounds remains a challenge. Stakeholder groups are typically socialized differently and may have different perspectives on IT governance dilemmas. Yet, extant literature offers only limited insight on socialized views on IT governance. This study uses an institutional logics lens to examine how competing institutional logics get connected in IT governance practices through dominant stakeholders' enactment patterns and how these enactment patterns may affect the organization's IT performance. We find that logics were coupled to the three dominant stakeholder groups, but only loosely so. Congruence between the three logics they enacted depended on the IT governance dilemma at hand. Our findings demonstrate how within a triad of competing logics, switching rivalry among hybrid logics may develop. Here, the enactments led to two hybrid logics, none of which became dominant. Remarkably, the IT professionalism logic accommodated polarization between medical professionalism and the managerial logic, causing unstable IT governance. We propose that IT professionalism offers room for agency and is crucial in determining the resulting enactment patterns: polarizing, compromising or even synthesizing. This study may raise managers' awareness of the competing logics underlying IT governance practices and clarify the pivotal role of IT professionalism in IT governance debates.

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

“…Second, we further our understanding of the role of professionals in managing competing logics that affect IT innovation. As shown in recent research, different occupational groups influence IT implementations by loosely coupling their practices to multiple logics; ie, they accept elements of a new logic without changing their day-to-day practices (Berente & Yoo, 2012;Boonstra et al, 2017). We demonstrate how actors shift across multiple logics and, thereby, affect IT innovation by managing their hybrid identities.…”

“…We add to this body of research by showing how different types of IT innovations can influence the extent to which different institutional logics are either complementary or competing. In addition, we demonstrate the crucial role of professional-managerial hybrids (Waring, 2014) in polarizing or bridging between logics that affect IT innovation (Boonstra et al, 2017) and in determining the strategies of association with and disassociation from IT innovations that threaten the autonomy of professional practice (Jensen, Kjaergaard, & Svejvig, 2009). More specifically, in our case study, we identified three degrees of conflict between institutional logics: "no conflict," "moderate conflict," and "high conflict."…”

“…Other studies imply that some logics (eg, IT professionalism vs. managerialism) are easier to reconcile than others (eg, IT professionalism vs. medical professionalism) (Boonstra et al, 2017). We add to this body of research by showing how different types of IT innovations can influence the extent to which different institutional logics are either complementary or competing.…”

“…These different stakeholders hold divergent expectations of what an IT innovation should do and how it should be deployed, often, retarding its adoption and implementation (Bunduchi, Smart, Charles, McKee, & Azura-Blanco, 2015;Sandeep & Ravishankar, 2014). Multiple interpretations of an IT innovation resonate different institutional logics (Boonstra, Eseryel, & van Offenbeek, 2017), namely, the cultural resources and norms that shape the way individuals perceive their social reality and, therefore, guide their behaviours and decisions (Friedland & Alford, 1991).…”

“…For example, by separating automated monitoring from actual performance of activities, users adapt to managerialism without changing their core professional practices (Berente & Yoo, 2012). Users remain loyal to the logic of their profession and are more likely to loosely couple their practices to a new logic when they have worked in different occupational roles (Boonstra et al, 2017). This is the case of professionals taking on a managerial role.…”