Venkatesh, V., Hoehle, H., and Aljafari, R. “A Usability Evaluation of the Obamacare Website,” Government Information Quarterly (31:4), 2014, 669-680.
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The healthcare.gov website, popularly called the Obamacare website, was off to a rough start. Although infrastructure issues received a great deal of media attention, the site has had its fair share of interface design problems. Drawing on the usability guidelines on the government site of usability.gov, we developed a survey instrument that comprised 16 dimensions to form overall usability. Based on a survey of 374 citizens, we found that usability strongly predicted citizen satisfaction with the website and intention to use the website. Six out of the 16 dimensions of usability emerged as significant in driving overall usability perceptions. In addition to key theoretical implications for e-government and usability research, our work offers practical implications for the healthcare.gov website and e-government web applications in general.
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Brown, S.A., Venkatesh, V., and Goyal, S. “Expectation Confirmation in Information Systems Research: A Test of Six Competing Models,” MIS Quarterly (38:3), 2014, 729-756.
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Expectation confirmation research in general, and in information systems (IS) in particular, has produced conflicting results. In this paper, we discuss six different models of expectation confirmation: assimilation, contrast, generalized negativity, assimilation-contrast, experiences only, and expectations only. Relying on key constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM), we test each of these six models that suggests different roles for expectations and experiences of the key predictor—here, perceived usefulness—and their impacts on key outcomes—here, behavioral intention, use, and satisfaction. Data were collected in a field study from 1,113 participants at two points in time. Using polynomial modeling and response surface analysis, we provide the analytical representations for each of the six models and empirically test them to demonstrate that the assimilation-contrast is the best existing model in terms of its ability to explain the relationships between expectations and experiences of perceived usefulness and important dependent variables—namely, behavioral intention, use, and satisfaction—in individual-level research on IS implementations.
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Venkatesh, V., Sykes, T.A., and Venkatraman, S. “Understanding E-government Portal Use in Rural India: Role of Demographic and Personality Characteristics,” Information Systems Journal (24:3), 2014, 249-269.
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Electronic government (e-Government) is one of the most important ways to bridge the digital divide in developing countries. We develop a model of e-Government portal use. We use various individual characteristics, namely demographics and personality, as predictors of e-Government portal use. Specifically, our predictors were (1) gender, age, income and education; (2) the Big Five personality characteristics, i.e. extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience; and (3) personal innovativeness with information technology. We conducted a field study in a village in India. We collected data from over 300 heads of household. We found support for our model, with most variables being significant and explaining 40% of the variance in e-Government portal use.
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Sykes, T.A., Venkatesh, V., and Johnson, J.L. “Enterprise System Implementation and Employee Job Performance: Understanding the Role of Advice Networks,” MIS Quarterly (38:1), 2014, 51-72.
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The implementation of enterprise systems, such as modules of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, alters business processes and associated workflows, and introduces new software applications that employees must use. Employees frequently find such technology-enabled organizational change to be a major challenge. Although many challenges related to such changes have been discussed in prior work, little research has focused on post-implementation job outcomes of employees affected by such change. We draw from social network theory—specifically, advice networks—to understand a key post-implementation job outcome—i.e., job performance. We conducted a social network study among 87 employees, with data gathered before and after the implementation of an ERP system module in a business unit of a large organization. We found support for our hypotheses that workflow advice and software advice are associated with job performance. Further, as predicted, we found that the interactions of workflow and software get-advice, workflow and software give-advice, and software giving and getting advice were associated with job performance. This nuanced treatment of advice networks advances our understanding of post-implementation success of enterprise systems.
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Bala, H. and Venkatesh, V. “Changes in Employees’ Job Characteristics during an Enterprise System Implementation: A Latent Growth Modeling Perspective,” MIS Quarterly (37:4), 2013, 1113-1140.
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Enterprise system implementations often create tension in organizations. On the one hand, these systems can provide significant operational and strategic benefits. On the other hand, implementation of these systems is risky and a source of major disruptions. In particular, employees experience significant changes in their work environment during an implementation. Although the relationship between ES implementations and employees’ jobs has been noted in prior research, there is limited research on the nature, extent, determinants, and outcomes of changes in employees’ job characteristics following an ES implementation. This paper develops and tests a model, termed the job characteristics change model (JCCM), that posits that employees will experience substantial changes in two job characteristics (i.e., job demands and job control) during the shakedown phase (i.e., immediately after the rollout) of an ES implementation. These changes are theorized to be predicted by work process characteristics, namely perceived process complexity, perceived process rigidity, and perceived process radicalness, that in turn will be influenced by technology characteristics (i.e., perceived technology complexity, perceived technology reconfigurability, and perceived technology customization). JCCM further posits that changes in job characteristics will influence employees’ job satisfaction. Longitudinal field studies conducted in two organizations (N = 281 and 141 respectively) provided support for the model. The scientific and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
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Zhang, X. and Venkatesh, V. “Explaining Employee Job Performance: The Role of Online and Offline Workplace Communication Networks,” MIS Quarterly (37:3), 2013, 695-722.
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By distinguishing between employees’ online and offline workplace communication networks, this paper incorporates technology into social network theory to understand employees’ job performance. Specifically, we conceptualize network ties as direct and indirect ties in both online and offline workplace communication networks, thus resulting in four distinct types of ties. We theorize that employees’ ties in online and offline workplace communication networks are complementary resources that interact to influence their job performance. We found support for our model in a field study among 104 employees in a large telecommunication company. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications.
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Venkatesh, V. and Sykes, T.A. “Digital Divide Initiative Success in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal Field Study in a Village in India,” Information Systems Research (24:2), 2013, 239-260.
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Digital divide initiatives in developing countries are an important avenue for the socio-economic advancement of those countries. Yet, little research has focused on understanding the success of such initiatives. We develop a model of technology use and economic outcomes of digital divide initiatives in developing countries. We use social networks as the guiding theoretical lens as it is well-suited to this context given the low literacy, high poverty, high collectivism and an oral tradition of information dissemination in developing countries. We test our model with longitudinal data gathered from 210 families in a rural village in India in the context of a digital divide initiative. As theorized, we found that the social network constructs contributed significantly to explanation of technology use (R2 = .39). Also, as we predicted, technology use partially mediated the effect of social network constructs on economic outcomes (R2 = .47). We discuss implications for theory and practice.
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Setia, P., Venkatesh, V., and Joglekar, S. “Leveraging Digital Technologies: How Information Quality Leads to Localized Capabilities and Customer Service Performance,” MIS Quarterly (37:2), 2013, 565-590.
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With the growing recognition of the customer’s role in service creation and delivery, there is an increased impetus on building customer-centric organizations. Digital technologies play a key role in such organizations. Prior research studying digital business strategies has largely focused on building production-side competencies and there has been little focus on customer-side digital business strategies to leverage these technologies. We propose a theory to understand the effectiveness of a customer-side digital business strategy focused on localized dynamics—here, a firm’s customer service units (CSUs). Specifically, we use a capabilities perspective to propose digital design as an antecedent to two customer service capabilities—namely, customer orientation capability and customer response capability—across a firm’s CSUs. These two capabilities will help a firm to locally sense and respond to customer needs, respectively. Information quality from the digital design of the CSU is proposed as the antecedent to the two capabilities. Proposed capabilitybuilding dynamics are tested using data collected from multiple respondents across 170 branches of a large bank. Findings suggest that the impacts of information quality in capability-building are contingent on the local process characteristics. We offer implications for a firm’s customer-side digital business strategy and present new areas for future examination of such strategies.
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Venkatesh, V., Brown, S.A., and Bala, H. “Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Guidelines for Conducting Mixed Methods Research in Information Systems,” MIS Quarterly (37:1), 2013, 21-54. [Among the 50 papers to receive Emerald’s Citations of Excellence award for 2015]
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Mixed methods research is an approach that combines quantitative and qualitative research methods in the same research inquiry. Such work can help develop rich insights into various phenomena of interest that cannot be fully understood using only a quantitative or a qualitative method. Notwithstanding the benefits and repeated calls for such work, there is a dearth of mixed methods research in information systems. Building on the literature on recent methodological advances in mixed methods research, we develop a set of guidelines for conducting mixed methods research in IS. We particularly elaborate on three important aspects of conducting mixed methods research: (1) appropriateness of a mixed methods approach; (2) development of meta-inferences (i.e., substantive theory) from mixed methods research; and (3) assessment of the quality of meta-inferences (i.e., validation of mixed methods research). The applicability of these guidelines is illustrated using two published IS papers that used mixed methods.
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Venkatesh, V. and Bala, H. “Adoption and Impacts of Interorganizational Business Process Standards: Role of Partnering Synergy,” Information Systems Research (23:4), 2012, 1131-1157.
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Notwithstanding potential benefits, such as quality of interorganizational relationships and operational and strategic gains, adoption of information technology (IT)-enabled interorganizational business process standards (IBPS) is still limited. Given that these standards are designed for interorganizational business processes, we suggest that adoption of these standards depends not only on the factors pertinent to a focal firm but also on factors that represent synergies between a focal firm and its trading partners. In this paper, building on the technological, organizational, and environmental (TOE) framework and interorganizational theories, we propose a model that postulates that a set of TOE factors will have synergistic effects (i.e., interactions between a focal firm’s and its partner’s factors) on IBPS adoption. We tested our model in a study of 248 firms (124 dyads) in the high-tech industry implementing RosettaNet-based IBPS and found that three TOE factors (i.e., process compatibility, standards uncertainty, and technology readiness) had synergistic effects and two factors (i.e., expected benefits and relational trust) had direct effects on IBPS adoption. We also found that IBPS adoption led to greater relationship quality (i.e., partnering satisfaction) and operational efficiency (i.e., cycle time). Further, we found that IBPS adoption mediated the effect of TOE factors on partnering satisfaction and cycle time.
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