A study of knowledge use effectiveness in IS department–A human agency perspective

Abstract

PurposeInformation technology changes rapidly, and the market trend flow changes even faster. The information systems (IS) department in a technological oriented environment has to ensure that the plans or solutions made by the IS department can align with organizational strategy to avoid resources waste, and adaptability is a crucial issue for an IS department too. This study believes that adaptability and alignment of the IS department are ambidexterity. The concept of knowledge use effectiveness (KUE), based on the human agency theory, proposed a research model mainly founded on intellectual capital, human agency theory, and contextual ambidexterity, and used intellectual capital (including human, structure and relational capital) as a framework to find the antecedents of knowledge usage.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducts an empirical research method and collects 150 valid cases from the IS department employees in Taiwan.FindingsThe results of this study are: (1) KUE in an IS department significantly improves the ambidexterity; (2) intellectual capital has a positive influence on KUE; (3) despite human capital having no influence on iteration, iterational KUE has no influence on adaptability.Originality/valueFor academics, this study has developed KUE through a novel perspective and uses the concept of the human agency to articulate the characteristic of KUE, and thus has combined the intellectual capital, human agency and contextual ambidexterity into a research model. For managers, they should learn that KUE has a positive effect on the IS department ambidexterity, composed of alignment and adaptability. By knowing that, they can understand the concrete elaboration of KUE much better. Therefore, enhancing the process of knowledge usage can be a practical and useful way of improving an IS department performance.