Data are often vividly depicted as strategic assets that organisations can (re)use to create value for myriad purposes. However, the same qualities that make data so appreciated – that is, their volume, their value for a plurality of stakeholders and their indefinite reuse capacity – also have a dark side: data reuse can lead to deviant data use that undermines the legitimacy of data analytics initiatives. To investigate this dynamic, we build on the notion of data ecosystems and provide empirical evidence from a longitudinal, 15-year case study of the emergence, expansion and eventual collapse of a large-scale data analytics project – called DAMD – in the Danish health care sector. We demonstrate that data reuse in the evolving data ecosystem elicited a data reuse dark side that was so dominant that it eventually resulted in the project’s demise. We conceptualise the reuse dark side’s three major mechanisms as function creep, stakeholder creep and data creep. Based on these insights, we develop an empirically grounded Data Analytics Ecosystem Model that extends the current understanding of data ecosystems and provides a view of these ecosystems as having both a bright and a dark side.

Researchers have studied the diffusion of information technology (IT) mainly as a process of adoption. However, the practices of supply-side agents of diffusion are just as critical to guaranteeing the adaptation of technology to the changing needs of the adopters. The execution of these practices over time and across multiple supply-side agents is both complex and understudied. Therefore, this study investigates IT diffusion practices from the perspective of supply-side agents. Drawing from a longitudinal case of development, sale, and institutionalisation of a healthcare information system, this article proposes a model of the supply side of technology diffusion. The model shows that diffusion depends on supply-side agents engaging in practices that are both demanding and possibly misaligned with traditional agent practices. Accordingly, the study provides an additional explanation for the complexity of technological diffusion and extends the theoretical framework of technology diffusion by adding supply-side dynamics.

When looking at changes in IT adoption and use in organisations, our theories rely – for the most part – on slow adoption timespans or – to a lesser extent – abrupt crises of short duration. We lack a model of IT adoption during a crisis of extended duration. This paper tackles this gap by looking at the IT-explorative and -exploitative teaching-related practices of university lecturers in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Based on qualitative data from three European higher education institutions and their responses to the COVID-19 crisis, we propose a process model of IT exploration/exploitation under a condition of extended crisis. The model shows that IT use and practices in response to a prolonged crisis go through phases, presenting predictable challenges that management can alleviate with a well-timed approach.

Organizations are limited in their choices by the institutional environment in which they operate. This is particularly true for IT sourcing decisions that go beyond cost considerations and are constrained by traditions, geographical location, and social networks. This article investigates how a company can disentangle itself from the constraints of the institutional environment. We do so drawing on a longitudinal case study of an Italian SME active in the steel industry that successfully changed its institutionally sound, but increasingly inefficient, IT sourcing practice. Our main result suggests that by attending steadily to institutional logics, organizations can become selective in how the institutional environment influences them and act more purposefully in their decisions. In particular, through the creation of companywide IT management competencies and targeted hiring practices, organizations can strike a balance between the different institutional logics guiding IT sourcing decisions and eventually shift from the dominant logic of localism to a logic of market efficiency. This change does not depend from a choice but rather builds on a process through which IT management competences are slowly integrated in the organization.

This article presents a framework that maps information system development (ISD) activities on systems for the creation of knowledge. This work addresses the relevant and persisting problem of improving the chances of ISD success. The article builds upon previous research on knowledge aspects of ISD, abandoning the idea of a monolithic approach to knowledge and presenting a pluralistic approach based on the idea that different inquiring systems can support micro-level ISD activities. The article is divided into two parts. The first part presents the theoretical development of the framework based on ISD literature and on Churchman's (1971) inquiring systems. The second part presents the use of the framework in an ISD project. The case is used to show the applicability of the framework and to highlight the advantages of this approach. The main theoretical implication is that the framework provides a new way to see the development of a system in terms of the knowledge created in the process. The main practical implication of the framework is that it improves the managers' ability to guide ISD activities as knowledge activities embedded in a knowledge process, a crucial element in development projects.