Social networks and adaptability to IT-enabled change: The case of healthcare information technologies.

摘要

Long-term assimilation of information technology (IT) is a persistent challenge for organizations, limiting the business value of these information technologies. Failure to adapt to IT-enabled changes in work processes is one factor limiting long-term assimilation of the technology. In an empirical study, a large hospital faced such long-term assimilation challenges, such that different units within the same organization differed in the extent to which they were able to adapt to IT-enabled changes in work processes. This was the case even though all units were using the same technology features, had access to the same resources, and were subject to the same concurrent implementation effort. In this study, I seek to understand why. Using social network analysis as the methodological lens, I examine the association between intra-unit social structures of knowledge demand and knowledge supply and unit-level variations in adaptability. Results show that structural variations in the knowledge demand and knowledge supply networks across units explain more of the variance in the adaptability of these units, than do other non-relational attributes of the units that have been explored in prior literature. Furthermore, my study also shows that the two arms of knowledge sharing - knowledge demand versus knowledge supply - have distinct social structural characteristics, and do not have the same impact on adaptability to IT-enabled change. In the knowledge demand network, the network structural characteristics of low average incloseness centrality and high network density had a positive effect on adaptability. Network cohesion had a negative effect on adaptability in partial models, when network density was not included in the analysis. In the knowledge supply network, high average eigenvector centrality and high network density had a positive effect on adaptability. The cohesiveness of the knowledge supply network was not found to have any significant effect on adaptability. This supports recent work on knowledge sourcing in the knowledge management literature that calls for taking a more nuanced, directional approach in the study of knowledge sharing. My research also contributes to the social networks literature, where such a directional approach to the study of knowledge networks has largely remained under-explored.