دانلود رایگان مقاله فراهم کردن روانی بیان سازمانی با فناوری اطلاعات و ارتباطات سیار

Abstract

The focus of this theoretical paper is to investigate how mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) give rise to the notion of organizational fluidity. Drawing upon previous literature, five affordances of mobile ICTs − mobility, connectedness, interoperability, identifiability, and personalization − are discussed. Delving into the concept of organizational fluidity, the paper captures three dimensions of organizational fluidity, namely, team fluidity, task fluidity, and control fluidity. The paper then develops propositions on how different combinations of the mobile ICT affordances influence each of the dimensions of organizational fluidity. The contributions and implications of the paper are discussed.

5. Contribution and future implications

5.1. Contribution Our paper makes a theoretical contribution to the literature on mobile ICTs and organizational fluidity. As a theoretical paper, it adheres to the standards established by Whetten [133], in delivering new theories relevant to both academic and practitioners. Notably, this is an example of a cross-level theory that describes “the relationship between independent and dependent variables at differentlevels” [102,p. 20]. The mobile ICT affordances are mostly at the individual level, whereas fluidity is at the organizational level. This cross-level theorizing is valuable.5 In organizational research, cross-level theorizing is in great demand, with some arguing “that cross-level . . . effects are so central to an understanding of organizational phenomena that they should be distinctive features of organizational scholarship . . . ”
often, a focus of such cross-level analyses has been how organizational properties emerge from activities occurring at the lower (e.g., individual/team) levels of analyses [134,p. 541]. While the focus of such theories is often apparently individuals, they are actually individuals embedded in an organizational context [56]. In this context, it is useful to note that regardless of how we define IT affordances, they basically refer to what IT allows users to do in an organizational context [72,140]. The IS discipline has increasingly considered cross-level/multilevel theories. Notably, one of the “highly valued characteristics” in MIS Quarterly Theory and Review include “multilevel theory” [71,p. v].