PhD Thesis Defense Presentation: Dominique Welt
Mr. Dominique Welt, a doctoral student at 海角社区 in the Information Systems area will be presenting his thesis defense entitled:
Adapting to IT consumerization: Understanding the role of the user鈥檚 IT self-concept clarity
Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 9:00 a.m.
(The defense will be done in Hybrid mode)
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Student Committee Chair: Professor Genevi猫ve Bassellier
Please note that the presentation will be conducted in hybrid mode. If you wish to attend the presentation, please contact the PhD office for the room number.
Abstract:
Individuals increasingly perform their work tasks using information technologies (IT) which they also consume in their personal lives. In this context, the consumption of IT influences the use of IT to perform work tasks, a trend referred to as IT consumerization. Utilizing the same IT as a consumer for personal purposes and as a user for work purposes requires users to adapt their use of the IT to fit the requirements of work tasks. Users must perform this adaptation while experiencing stress from using these IT across multiple contexts. Furthermore, it has been noted that organizations struggle to support users in their adaptation.
Interacting with the same IT across multiple contexts leads users to develop multiple and heterogeneous beliefs about themselves as IT users, which impact how they use IT to perform work tasks. While attention has been brought to the effect of the content of the beliefs that individuals have toward themselves as IT users, scarce attention has been brought to the role of the clarity of the organization of the beliefs that individuals have toward themselves. Understanding the role of this concept could improve our understanding of user behavior in the context of IT consumerization. Indeed, the clarity individuals have over themselves is known to explain how individuals react and adapt themselves to their environment in the psychology literature.
This thesis investigates the role of the clarity of the organization of users' beliefs toward themselves as IT users in explaining why they adapt themselves when using consumer IT to perform work tasks. The thesis is organized into three chapters: one introduction and two empirical papers. The first chapter serves as an introduction and includes a literature review regarding the context of IT consumerization and the self-concept clarity concept that will be adapted to study adaptation to IT consumerization in this thesis.
The second chapter is an empirical paper aiming at defining and measuring the clarity of the organization of individuals' beliefs toward themselves as IT users, or their IT self-concept clarity (ITSCC). The first section of the paper defines the ITSCC construct and differentiates it from related constructs. The second section of the paper proposes and validates a scale for ITSCC and tests its utility.
The third chapter is an empirical paper taking attention to the causal impact of ITSCC when interacting with IT. This paper argues that the level of ITSCC can potentially affect users' adaptation of IT use based on suggestions, depending on the message's framing. This is done through a laboratory experiment using a microblogging social networking site as a consumer IT.
Together, these chapters aim to expand our understanding of the beliefs individuals develop toward themselves as IT users, how the clarity of their organization impacts the user鈥檚 interactions with IT, and how users adapt themselves when using consumer IT for work tasks. The findings from this thesis will inform managers of a key trait of users impacting their interactions with IT at work and how IT features and policies can be designed to take account of this trait.
