0000000001038604
AUTHOR
Tapani Rinta-kahila
Toward a refined conceptualization of IS discontinuance : Reflection on the past and a way forward
Interest in studying information systems discontinuance has been increasing lately, yet there is no consensus on what it means. To improve the situation, we conduct a comprehensive review of current literature on IS discontinuance and identify 55 studies published during 1991–2017 that specifically focus on the topic. Our conceptual analysis disentangles the process, content, and context of the phenomenon, revealing that over the course of a typical IS lifecycle, IS discontinuance may materialize at least in five distinct forms: rejection, regressive discontinuance, quitting, temporary discontinuance, and replacement. After elaborating their distinctions, we discuss their theoretical, metho…
Unethical but not illegal: Uncovering the persuasive messages leveraged by providers of the “real” online social impressions
Due to the drastically elevated prominence of social networking sites (SNS), online social impressions such as views, comments, followers, subscribers, likes, and dislikes have become a valuable currency that translates to popularity, credibility, and even financial gains. Aside from machine-generated impressions, a growing industry known as crowdturfing utilizes human workers to provide “real” social impressions as-a-service. Although crowdturfing platforms are often seen as a clear example of deceptive conduct, they justify their business by leveraging well-crafted persuasive strategies and ethical appeals. Given the increasingly significant role of online impressions on shaping people’s …
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…
Why Is Your Crowd Abandoning You? : Exploring Crowdsourcing Discontinuance through the Lens of Motivation Theory
A typical crowdsourcing platform connects organisations in need for workforce to individuals willing to work for a compensation. Considering that a motivated crowd constitutes a vital resource of such platforms, nurturing it becomes a crucial managerial consideration. Yet, little is known of why individual workers abandon crowdsourcing platforms after long periods of usage. Therefore, we set out to explore how crowd-workers’ motivations change during a platform’s usage lifecycle, from initial usage, to continued use, to its eventual abandonment. To this end, we conducted an in-depth qualitative inquiry into a popular crowdsourcing platform in the software-testing domain. Leveraging self-det…