In his early work, Karl Weick referred to information technology (IT) as “equivoques” to underline the conflicting interpretations that often arise among users, groups, and organizations interacting with IT. As modern IT systems support a growing variety of uses and applications, this phenomenon intensifies, with important implications for attitude formation and use behaviors. Based on individual sensemaking theory, we define perceived IT equivocality as a user’s difficulty in making sense of an IT and theorize that this psychological phenomenon manifests through perceptions of incompleteness, fragmentation, and uncertainty. Three empirical studies (n = 419, n = 411, n = 345) were conducted to validate this multidimensional construct and examine its relevance in postadoptive use settings. The results indicate that perceived IT equivocality is negatively associated with routine and innovative use and positively associated with behavioral anxiety, confirming its theorized influence on usage patterns. In closing, we discuss the importance of the IT equivocality construct to both theory and practice, along with the limitations of our work. Our distinctive contributions include 1) conceptualizing an IS-specific psychological phenomenon, 2) developing and validating a multidimensional scale, and 3) demonstrating the behavioral potency of the construct.

Michael Gall* & Federico PigniGrenoble Ecole de ManagementCONTACT Michael Gall [email protected] development and operations (DevOps) is a model for delivering software as a service that comprises a set of practices and tools combining the responsibilities for both developing and operating the software into a single team. DevOps has been shown to offer advantages over traditional, waterfall-based software development methods. Agile software development practices have radically changed how developers realize software, breaking traditional structures. DevOps enables the team to continuously deliver software. The scope of DevOps is different, as it focuses on the relation between the development and operations teams. Both the academic literature and business press opine on DevOps implementation challenges and failures. The literature on DevOps is abundant but fails to convey with clarity what DevOps is. The lack of a homogeneous and clear conceptualization of DevOps is considered a major obstacle to the diffusion of this methodology.We perform a systematic literature review to identify, review, and synthesise all the relevant studies published in the field of information systems and software engineering between 2012 and 2020. As a result of our review, we derive a conceptual model providing a logical categorisation and a clear definition of the conceptual elements of DevOps.

"On conceptualising and defining DevOps: short comments to Hemon-Hildgen and Rowe." European Journal of Information Systems, 31(5), pp. 575–576

This article describes how in their search for value creation, companies are investing considerable resources in so-called “Big Data” initiatives. A peculiar aspect of these initiatives is the increasing availability of real-time streams of data. Successfully leveraging these streams to extract value is emerging as a critical competence for the modern firm. Despite the significant attention received, scholarly research on Digital Data Stream (DDS) remains insufficient. More importantly, there are no specialized definitions and measurement instruments that can move the field forward by initiating a cumulative research tradition. This article can provide clarification on key definitions, differentiating DDS from Big Data. Drawing on the organizational readiness concept, the DDS readiness index develops as a measure of organizational readiness to exploit real-time digital data. This article will conceptualize, define, operationalize and validate the index. By identifying the four dimensions of mindset, skillset, dataset and toolset as the elements of the DDS readiness index and discussing its managerial and research implications