Everyday Appropriations of Information Technology: A Study of Creative Uses of Digital Cameras
Repurposive appropriation is a creative everyday act in which a user invents a novel use for information technology (IT) and adopts it. This study is the first to address its prevalence and predictability in the consumer IT context. In all, 2,379 respondents filled in an online questionnaire on creative uses of digital cameras, such as using them as scanners, periscopes, and storage media. The data reveal that such creative uses are adopted by about half of the users, on average, across different demographic backgrounds. Discovery of a creative use on one's own is slightly more common than is learning it from others. Most users discover the creative uses either completely on their own or wh…
Consequences of Discontinuing Knowledge Work Automation – Surfacing of Deskilling Effects and Methods of Recovery
IS automation pervades business processes today. Thus, concerns have been raised about automation’s potential deskilling effects on knowledge workers. We conduct a revelatory case study about an IT service firm where a managerial decision was taken to discontinue a fixed assets management (FAM) software that provided seemingly effective automation of fixed assets accounting and reporting. We study how automation can result in latent deskilling that later becomes apparent when the system gets discontinued, causing disruptions in employees’ daily work and organizational processes. We also investigate how the employees and the company recover from this disruption by leveraging various coping s…