Sustaining the derivation of information technology benefits: Perspectives on post-adoption use of IT and the renewal of IT-enabled resources in higher education context

Abstract

Organizations make huge investments in Information Technology (IT) expecting to derive performance benefits from their investments but often struggle to derive the anticipated benefits. Research indicates that over 70% of investment in IT fail either during the implementation of the IT or during post-implementation where the IT is underused, misused, or abandoned even after a successful implementation. However, for an organization to derive IT benefits, users need to actively use the IT to accomplish work tasks long beyond initial adoption. Further, research shows that even when organizations derive benefits from IT, the benefits are usually short-lived. Apparently, whilst users use an IT, they combine the IT with other organizational resources to form IT-enabled resources from which they derive IT benefits. Paradoxically, the combination and integration needed to derive IT benefits may also constrain the renewal of IT-enabled resources to achieve new strategic imperatives, thus derailing the derivation of IT benefits in the long term. This doctoral dissertation examines how organizations can sustain the derivation of IT benefits. Drawing on a systematic review of the post-implementation literature, this dissertation finds that IT use co-evolves with its antecedents, which can be grouped into support structures, support activities, and support attributes. Further, drawing on an in-depth case study of a multi-feature mobile app, it explicates a nuanced explanation of post adoption use and how organizations can sustain post adoption use of multi-feature mobile apps. Furthermore, drawing on a review of published empirical cases and an in-depth case study, it finds that three structural properties, namely component flexibility, component centrality, and component coupling, emerge during the formation of IT-enabled resources to constrain or enable the renewal of IT-enabled resources. Together, the findings shed light on how managers can promote and sustain IT use after initial adoption and on the structural properties that managers can orchestrate to enable the renewal of IT-enabled resources to address shifting goals thereby sustaining the derivation of IT benefits. We discuss the implications for research.

Keywords: IT assets, IT use, IT benefits, post adoption, IT-enabled resource, structural properties of IT-enabled resources, multi-feature mobile apps.