Strategic Relevance of Organizational Virtues Enabled by Information Technology in Organizational Innovation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chatterjee, Sutirtha; Moody, Gregory; Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Chakraborty, Suranjan; Hardin, Andrew
• 署名单位: Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE); University of Nevada Las Vegas; City University of Hong Kong; University System of Maryland; Towson University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0742-1222
• DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2015.1099180
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 158-196
• 关键词: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT; firm performance; memory-systems; Competitive advantage; RADICAL CHANGE; Social media; wisdom; BUSINESS; capabilities; JUSTICE

摘要

The central theme of this paper is that information technology (IT) can serve to create ethical organizations endowed with virtuous characteristics, and that such ethical organizations can innovate better in today's dynamic market environment. Drawing on the notion of virtue ethics propounded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, we theorize that core organizational IT affordances influence the development of organizational virtues, which in turn influence organizational improvisational capabilities and innovation. We propose the IT-virtues-innovation (IVI) model and test it using a cross-organizational survey of 250 employees from various organizations in the United States. Our findings largely support our proposal that IT affordances positively influence organizational virtues, which then influence organizational improvisational capabilities, thus improving organizational innovation. This paper contributes to the understanding of organizational innovation by articulating the strategic usefulness of IT-enabled organizational ethics, and it explains how IT-enabled ethical competence (virtues) influences strategic competence (improvisational capabilities and innovation).