adoption of mobile business solutions and its impact on organizational stakeholders

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Sabine Berghaus Institute of Information Management

University of St.Gallen

Adoption of Mobile Business Solutions and its Impact on Organizational Stakeholders

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Motivation and Research Question 1

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Introducing new technology

- Companies introduce new technology «top-down» (e.g. Gallivan 2001).

- Main question for organizations is how to facilitate adoption

Theories on individual adoption behavior are well explored, e.g. TAM (Davis, 1989), Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003)

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Consumerization

- Consumer market is moving much faster than the enterprise market.

- Employees bring their gadgets and software to the workplace (Harris et al., 2012).

How can companies incorporate new practices?

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Research Questions

1. What are the main drivers of mobile business solution adoption in a corporate environment?

2. What implications do these drivers have for different organizational stakeholders?

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Method 2

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Grounded Theory Approach

Description Goal

Focus Group

• 11 managers from various industries

• World Café discussion • Ideate, Evaluate, Prioritize

results

Research organizational challenges

Expert Interviews

• 7 managers from various industries

• Semi-structured • Coding of transcripts • Inductive analysis

Research adoption drivers and inhibitors in organizational context

Result of analysis: 81 codes that were merged into 7 clusters

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Findings 3

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Mobile User Experience

«This was released to 3,500 people without training. We offered training, but nobody needed it» (Head of Mobile CM, Insurance Company)

Image Copyright Samsung Electronics Switzerland, http://www.samsung.com/ch/news/picturelibrary.html

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Mobile User Experience

Adoption Drivers

• Easy to use interface design

• Touch interaction paradigm

• Global and standardized interaction patterns

Impact on Organizational Stakeholders

Users facilitating

Operating departments

-

-

Corporate IT

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Social Influence

«I noticed when I show the app to somebody, people think it’s awesome and they will tell someone else. This works better than the usual means of communication.» (Lead Mobile Services, Logistics and Transportation Company)


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Social Influence

Adoption Drivers

• Access to opinions and experiences of others

• Enhancing image (especially in client interactions)


Users


-

facilitating

Corporate IT

facilitating

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Time To Market

«These are very moderate investments, apps for less than CHF 200.000, implemented in less than 6 months […] this also convinces the management.» (Head of Mobile CM, Insurance Company)


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Time To Market

Adoption Drivers

• First mover advantage in a competitve organization

• Fast implementation

• (Comparably) cheap investment

• External vendors

• Readily available services (cloud services)


Users


Corporate IT

facilitating

creates challenge

-

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Security

«People get pretty angry when IT says – you can use your own device, but we will restrict functionality, put a virus scanner on it and you need an 8-digit PIN […] This is a real problem when you just want to write an SMS on your own device and have to type in an 8-digit PIN.» (Head of Enterprise Mobility, IT Consultancy)


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Security

Adoption Drivers

• Non-negotiable criteria

• Protection of internal data


Users


Corporate IT

facilitating

requires decision

creates challenge

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Workplace Flexibility

«This is an expression of individuality, people like to express themselves at work, they like to be comfortable […] modern and mobile. It’s almost a status symbol.» (Head of Enterprise Mobility, IT Consultancy)


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Workplace Flexibility

Adoption Drivers

• Expression of a modern and individualist lifestyle.

• Use own devices / software

• Work from anywhere


Users


Corporate IT

facilitating

-

creates challenge

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Information Availability

«For a trip which takes up to two weeks, you have an iPad which weighs 400gm. In the past, our colleagues reported that they travelled with 13kg of paper» (Head of Mobile CM, Insurance Company)

«There are lots of documents they have to carry around, they have to be updated. This gets checked by the authorities and now we put this on an iPad.» (Lead Mobile Services, Logistics and Transportation Company)


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Information Availability

Adoption Drivers

• Easy access to all critical information in one place

• Synchronization

• Offline availability


Users


Corporate IT

facilitating

requires decision

creates challenge

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Process Mobilization

«One client wanted a mobile solution for his sales staff, but when they got back to the office with their mobile devices, they had to continue in the paper process» (Head of Mobile Unit, IT Consultancy)


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Process Mobilization

Adoption Drivers

• Mobile availability of entire workflows

• Enabling new workflows when using features of mobile devices (camera, GPS, …)

• Integrate into existing workflows, without redundancies


Users


Corporate IT

facilitating

requires decision

creates challenge

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Conceptual framework

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«Big Picture» 4

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Further Research

ORGANIZATION

TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

ENTERPRISE MOBILITY

• What other stakeholders are affected?

• What transformation processes is enterprise mobility causing in organizations?

• What processes should be mobilized? What measurable effect did that have in today’s corporations?

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Feedback / Questions? Sabine Berghaus

[email protected] @stadtnomadin about.me/sabineberghaus

Thank you!