8. Conclusion
Employee subversion of corporate IS policy is not a topic that has received much attention from researchers. However, we suggest that this is a phenomenon that will become more salient as ever more digital natives enter the workforce and confront organizational cultures and values established under the aegis of senior managers accustomed to very different normative behaviours. Given the extent to which social media applications and other forms of IS are embedded into the lives of digital natives, it would be naïve to expect these same people to amputate integral parts of their lives and personalities: instead, we should expect them to fight to retain access to the same social media applications, whether for work or nonwork purposes. Digitally literate employees have a considerable repertoire of resources and skills at hand to secure the optimal working environment, irrespective of corporate IS policy or mandate. In this paper, we have explored how digital native employees in the Chinese operations of a global hotel chain subvert a restrictive corporate IS policy, securing access to the resources they insist they need. We also identify some theoretical components of the phenomenon that merit future investigation. We anticipate the strong need for more research into the feral systems developed by bricolage-oriented employees who baulk at nothing to gain access to the technologies that they deem essential to their work.
