Informa UK Limited

A major stream of research within the field of information systems security examines the use of organizational policies that specify how users of information and technology resources should behave in order to prevent, detect, and respond to security incidents. However, this growing (and at times, conflicting) body of research has made it challenging for researchers and practitioners to comprehend the current state of knowledge on the formation, implementation, and effectiveness of security policies in organizations. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to synthesize what we know and what remains to be learned about organizational information security policies, with an eye toward a holistic understanding of this research stream and the identification of promising paths for future study. We review 114 influential security policy-related journal articles and identify five core relationships examined in the literature. Based on these relationships, we outline a research framework that synthesizes the construct linkages within the current literature. Building on our analysis of these results, we identify a series of gaps and draw on additional theoretical perspectives to propose a revised framework that can be used as a basis for future research.

When adopting an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, experiencing misalignments between the functionality offered by the package and that required by the firm is common. Implementing an ERP package often necessitates disruptive organizational change, and the outcome of implementation is largely determined by the resolution of misalignment problems. This study draws upon data from a case study to understand the misalignments of ERP adoption and the associated change dynamics from a stage view. The results reveal that industry-, company-, and regulation-specific misalignments often occurred in the chartering phase; misalignments of input, control, data, process, output, and schedule are the major problems in the project phase; misalignments of information and new business requirements are the main concerns in the shakedown phase and onward and upward phase. The cascading effects of misalignments and change actions are illustrated, the misalignment resolution strategies examined, and the implications discussed.

In this special issue, we advocate a critical stance toward the presentational conventions that we – as authors, reviewers, and editors – accept as the academic article genre. We seek to highlight and illustrate the generative capacity and the significant role of genres in the production of knowledge. Furthermore, we wish to encourage Information Systems (IS) scholars to leverage a wider array of alternative genres to present their research in order to develop new insights on subject matters of interest to the IS discipline, as well as expand on how contemporary and emergent phenomena of interest are conceived and studied. Adopting a broad view of alternative genres, we solicited articles that apply unconventional presentational modalities to expand or challenge the prevailing modus operandi of communicating IS scholarship and practice. Six articles survived a rather lengthy and challenging review process. We briefly discuss the nature of the academic article genre and the role of alternative ways of writing. We also introduce the six exemplars of alternative genres in the special issue, namely conversation, French new novel, meditation, memoir, allegory, and crowdsourced research. We highlight key insights and contemplate their implications for current and future IS research.

Based on a task-technology fit (TTF) model, this study adds to our understanding of how computer-based information systems (CBIS) support managerial decision making. Based on four views of decision making and various classifications of CBIS, the findings indicate that both the Greek and US managers value CBIS most highly for resource allocation, evaluating alternatives, identifying problems, ranking alternatives, and short-term decision making. Few TTF differences were found between Greek and US managers. One difference, concerning the value of office information systems, may have arisen from technological differences; however, additional research is needed to understand if these TTF differences arise from technological or cultural differences. Two surprising hypotheses emerge from the findings to provide guidance for future research: (1) standard, fixed-schedule, fixed-format information reporting systems (IRS) provide greater value for managers than more flexible decision support systems (DSS), at least for some managerial decision-making activities, and (2) the amount of use of a CBIS is not directly related to its perceived value. Overall, the results indicate that the fit between managerial decision-making activities, and CBIS has considerable room for improvement.

The alignment of business strategy and IT has been a top managerial concern for decades. Yet despite much investigation, the effect of strategic IT alignment on organizational performance remains unclear, with mixed results reported in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of mixed findings in IT alignment research. We first examine inconsistent findings reported in two streams of alignment research: the traditional firm-level IT alignment literature and the emerging literature into process-level IT alignment. We then empirically investigate whether firm- and process-level conceptualizations of IT alignment lead to different conclusions about the effect of alignment on performance. Using data from a survey of 120 firms, we show that firm-level IT alignment and process-level IT alignment yield different conclusions when testing the same theory under the same conditions. We also show that differences in firms’ strategic orientations can help explain these results. This research provides evidence that firm- and process-level conceptualizations of IT alignment are not interchangeable and that the choice of conceptualization can mean the difference between accepting and rejecting a theory.