Towards 'Open' IS Managers: An Exploration of Individual-Level Connectedness, Ambidexterity, and Performance

This paper examines the individual IS manager's ability to exploit current IT capabilities and explore new technology innovations. It extends the concept of ambidexterity, which is often studied at the firm or business unit level, to the individual level, and draws from open innovation theory to examine how the ability of an individual IS manager to explore and exploit is associated with their degree of external and internal connectedness. The research model is tested through a survey of 67 IS managers from a large financial services company. The results show that external connectedness is strongly and positively associated with an IS manager's ability to innovate while internal connectedness is negatively associated with exploration. In addition, the degree to which individual IS managers simultaneously engage in exploration and exploitation (i.e. ambidexterity) is found to be positively associated with individual performance.

[1]  Zeki Simsek.  Organizational Ambidexterity: Towards a Multilevel Understanding , 2009 .

[2]  Myriam Cloodt,et al.  Open innovation in value networks , 2006 .

[3]  M. Snowdon.  The Heart of Enterprise , 1979 .

[4]  K. Boudreau,et al.  How to Manage Outside Innovation , 2009 .

[5]  Rudy Hirschheim,et al.  The evolution of the corporate IT function and the role of the CIO at Texaco: how do perceptions of IT's performance get formed? , 2003, DATB.

[6]  H. Chesbrough,et al.  Innovating Business Models with Co-Development Partnerships , 2007 .

[7]  K. Eisenhardt,et al.  Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos , 1998 .

[8]  Kollin J. Patten,et al.  How CIOs Balance Flexibility and Reliability in Uncertain Business Environments , 2004, Int. J. Comput. Syst. Signals.

[9]  Marianne Broadbent,et al.  The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results , 2004 .

[10]  Rita Gunther McGrath.  Exploratory Learning, Innovative Capacity, and Managerial Oversight , 2001 .

[11]  Geert Vissers,et al.  Open Innovation: The New Way of Knowledge Transfer? , 2007 .

[12]  S. Zahra,et al.  Absorptive Capacity: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension , 2002 .

[13]  Henk W. Volberda,et al.  Exploratory Innovation, Exploitative Innovation and Peformance: Effects of Organizational Antecedents and Environmental Moderators , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[14]  Zi-Lin He,et al.  Exploration vs. Exploitation: An Empirical Test of the Ambidexterity Hypothesis , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[15]  K. Provan,et al.  Interorganizational Networks at the Network Level: A Review of the Empirical Literature on Whole Networks , 2007 .

[16]  D. Cohen,et al.  Toward a Knowledge Context: Report on the First Annual U.C. Berkeley Forum on Knowledge and the Firm , 1998 .

[17]  C. Fornell,et al.  Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. , 1981 .

[18]  William W. Cohen,et al.  Exploratory Learning , 2013, ECML/PKDD.

[19]  David Simms,et al.  The Heart of Enterprise , 1980 .

[20]  E. Hippel.  Cooperation between Rivals: Informal Know-How Trading , 1987 .

[21]  Teresa M. Amabile,et al.  Creativity In Context: Update To The Social Psychology Of Creativity , 1996 .

[22]  M. A. Quaddus,et al.  An Analysis of IT Expectation across Different Strategic Context of Innovation: the CEO versus the CIO , 2008, PACIS.

[23]  Jeffrey H. Dyer,et al.  The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage , 1998 .

[24]  Mohan Subramaniam,et al.  The Influence of Intellectual Capital on the Types of Innovative Capabilities , 2005 .

[25]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[26]  P. M. Podsakoff,et al.  Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects , 1986 .

[27]  Bernard J. Jaworski,et al.  Market orientation: Antecedents and consequences , 1993 .

[28]  M. Tushman,et al.  Exploration and Exploitation Within and Across Organizations , 2010 .

[29]  J. Brown,et al.  The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends On Productive Friction And Dynamic Specialization , 2005 .

[30]  Brian Whitworth,et al.  How CIOs Use Flexibility to Manage Uncertainty in Dynamic Business Environments , 2009, AMCIS.

[31]  A. Lewin,et al.  Co-evolutionary Dynamics Within and Between Firms: From Evolution to Co-evolution , 2003 .

[32]  Roger J. Calantone,et al.  Adding Interpersonal Learning and Tacit Knowledge to March's Exploration-Exploitation Model , 2006 .

[33]  J. Nunnally.  Psychometric Theory (2nd ed), New York: McGraw-Hill. , 1978 .

[34]  J. Birkinshaw,et al.  Building Ambidexterity Into an Organization , 2004 .

[35]  E. Hippel.  Innovation by User Communities: Learning From Open-Source Software , 2001 .

[36]  Henry Chesbrough,et al.  Open Innovation: A research agenda , 2006 .

[37]  Justin J. P. Jansen,et al.  Senior Team Attributes and Organizational Ambidexterity: The Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership , 2008 .

[38]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences , 2007, Behavior research methods.

[39]  J. Alexander,et al.  Images of Organization , 1988 .

[40]  Rens Scheepers,et al.  A process-focused decision framework for analyzing the business value potential of IT investments , 2008, Inf. Syst. Frontiers.

[41]  Wim Vanhaverbeke,et al.  The inter-organizational context of open innovation , 2006 .

[42]  Vijay Sethi,et al.  Development of measures to assess the extent to which an information technology application provides competitive advantage , 1994 .

[43]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  The myopia of learning , 1993 .

[44]  M. Lorenzen.  Creativity in context : Content, cost, chance and collection in the organization of the film industry , 2009 .

[45]  J. Birkinshaw,et al.  Organizational Ambidexterity: Antecedents, Outcomes, and Moderators , 2008 .

[46]  C. Gibson,et al.  THE ANTECEDENTS , CONSEQUENCES , AND MEDIATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY , 2004 .

[47]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Specifying Formative Constructs in Information Systems Research , 2007, MIS Q..

[48]  Pat Joynt.  International Dimensions of Managing Technology , 1991 .

[49]  Lee Fleming,et al.  Penguins, Camels, and Other Birds of a Feather: Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities , 2005 .

[50]  Rajiv Kohli,et al.  Realizing the Business Value of Information Technology Investments: An Organizational Process , 2004, MIS Q. Executive.

[51]  Wynne W. Chin.  The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. , 1998 .

[52]  Varun Grover,et al.  Shaping Agility through Digital Options: Reconceptualizing the Role of Information Technology in Contemporary Firms , 2003, MIS Q..

[53]  J. Marshall.  Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology , 2004 .

[54]  Peter Gwynne,et al.  Open Innovation's Promise and Perils , 2007 .

[55]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Validating Instruments in MIS Research , 1989, MIS Q..

[56]  F. Peter,et al.  THE INFORMATION EXECUTIVES TRULY NEED , 1992 .

[57]  Peter F. Drucker,et al.  The Information That Executives Truly Need , 1995 .

[58]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning , 2007 .

[59]  Shaker A. Zahra,et al.  Goverance, Ownership, and Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Moderating Impact of Industry Technological Opportunities , 1996 .