IS-Driven Organizational Responsiveness

Abstract

We develop and subsequently test a model detailing how knowledge technologies, embodied in intra-organizational information systems (IS), provide opportunities that influence individual-level human motivations to engage in knowledge exchange processes, thereby influencing organizational responsiveness. Our model both explains and predicts the different contributions of IS-driven antecedents influencing organizational responsiveness, to include knowledge technologies, employee motivations, and processes to exchange knowledge. We specifically examine a large government agency charged with responding to national security threats, public health outbreaks, and environmental disasters. For knowledge-intensive enterprises confronting such challenges, organizational responsiveness represents their ability to respond to emergent opportunities or concerns. Our results shed light on both the importance of and macro-level manner in which such organizations can to pair decision support for extreme events with strategic information systems encouraging relevant knowledge exchanges and processes.

Keywords: intra-organizational information systems, decision support for extreme events, knowledge exchanges, exploration, exploitation, formal incentives, normative values, competence-based trust, social dilemmas, knowledge technologies

JEL Classification: D21, D23, D70, D83, O30