Management Information Systems Commons^™

Toward An Ontology Of Workarounds: A Literature Review On Existing Concepts, Nina Röder, Manuel Wiesche, Michael Schermann, Helmut Krcmar

Information Systems and Analytics

While workarounds are studied frequently in information systems research, a coherent and interrelated structure to organize the knowledge of the field is still missing. In this study, we provide a first step towards an ontology of workarounds in order to enable researchers to study the relationships among the core concepts. By identifying existing literature, we discover three gaps in workaround research: (1) lack of conceptual consensus, (2) fragmentation and (3) static perspective. To advance theory, we provide an overview of different types of workarounds that are frequently used in literature. Based on these findings we derive core concepts of workarounds …

A Work System Perspective On Adoption Entities, Adoption Processes, And Post-Adoption Compliance And Noncompliance, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This conceptual contribution responds to the invitation to the DIGIT 2015 Call for Papers “to reflect on and move forward from the dominant stream of research work on technology acceptance.” The dominant stream of research is basically about antecedents and correlates of adoption and continuation of use for hardware/software artifacts. This paper uses work system theory and several of its extensions to identify directions for adoption research that have been realized partially, but not nearly to the extent possible. It focuses on three general issues:

1) what adoption means in the context of work systems,

2) how adoption occurs, and …

A Workaround Design System For Anticipating, Designing, And/Or Preventing Workarounds, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Idealized system design produces requirements reflecting management intentions and “best practices.” This paper proposes a workaround design system (WDS) for anticipating, designing, and/or preventing workarounds that bypass systems as designed. A WDS includes a process and an interactive “workaround design tool” (WDT) for identifying and evaluating foreseeable workarounds based on work system theory and a theory of workarounds. This paper summarizes the conceptual background and explains the form, use, and implications of the proposed WDS and WDT.

The idea of WDS addresses significant gaps in practice and research. Designers should have methods for identifying likely obstacles and anticipating and evaluating …