The Impact of Positive Informal Behaviors on the Effectiveness of Information Systems Departments

Abstract

Good relationships between information systems (IS) and business employees build shared understanding and cross-domain knowledge, and enhance the level of business-IS alignment in an organization. Most researchers have focused on improving the quality and frequency of communication, and less work has been done on the informal activities IS staff carry out to aid their non-IS colleagues. This limited attention on the behaviors of IS employees restricts our understanding of how positive interaction between IS and non-IS employees can be encouraged and how it affects the effectiveness of an IS department. Drawing on the concept of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), we derive a set of IS-specific OCBs by reviewing the literature and relate them to characteristics of IS departments and IS employees. Our research questions are: a) When are IS professionals more likely to engage in IS-specific OCBs? b) What is the impact of IS-specific OCBs on the effectiveness of the IS department?