Abstract
Digitally literate employees are accustomed to having free access to digital media technologies. However, some organizations enact information technology (IT) governance structures that explicitly proscribe access to these technologies, resulting in considerable tension between employees and the organization. We explore these tensions in an exploratory investigation into the Chinese operations of a global hotel chain. We examine how employees creatively act as bricoleurs as they violate IT policies to ensure access to the digital media of their choice. We discuss the broader implications of our findings for practicing managers, as well as future research opportunities, before concluding the paper.
7. Future research and conclusions
Through this investigation of a digitally literate population of hotel employees in an organization that is deeply suspicious of digital technologies and certainly has not attempted to digitize its working processes, we have explored some of the tensions in the sociotechnical systems, as well as the adaptations that employees create in response. The tensions among the organization’s centralized IT policy and systems, the dynamic social environment (i.e., the guanxi-based Chinese culture in our case) and the increasing levels of digital literacy leads to employees engaging in acts of bricolage. We propose a high-level model to explain how employees interact with their environment, and we suggest that this needs both further elaboration and testing in other organizational contexts. Although the trend of digitization may seem secure, we should expect considerable resistance from organizations, especially where there is an entrenched old guard whose interests are firmly aligned with the status quo. Since Zuboff [66], we have known that the shift to smart organizations will be hesitant: organizational cultures are slow to change. However, we suggest that it is futile for organizations to expect to restrain the digital inclinations of their employees indefinitely. Technology change can be evolutionary, but the results can be revolutionary. Although many organizations today have failed to adopt the new technology and adapt their managerial systems to the new social– technical environment, others are embracing the opportunities brought by technology and are championing new forms of competitiveness. The pressure from the digitally literate to digitize the organization will continue to grow. A planned and phased approach to digitization may be more sensible, allowing the organization some degree of control over the change process.
