Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Informationstechnik FIT

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  • Publication
    Investigating the co-creation of IT consulting service value: Empirical findings of a matched pair analysis
    ( 2022)
    Oesterle, S.
    ;
    Buchwald, A.
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    Digitalization is increasingly and broadly impacting on companies throughout all industries. To cope with digital transformation, organizations need specific IT skills and often face a bottleneck between required and existing capabilities. Thus, organizations revert to support from IT consultants. However, such collaborations need to create value so as to make client organizations future-proof in the long term. We therefore need a better understanding of how value is created in IT consulting projects. We build on service-dominant (S-D) logic as the theory base and evaluate our structural model, which explains IT consulting service value based on 77 matched pairs of IT consulting projects using structural equation modeling. We provide empirical support for the assumptions of S-D logic in the IT consulting industry and reveal determinants that significantly contribute to the overall IT consulting service value. Our results contribute to the ongoing discourse in the S-D logic literature and provide meaningful insights for practice.
  • Publication
    Robotic Process Automation
    ( 2020)
    Hofmann, Peter
    ;
    Samp, Caroline
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    Within digital transformation, which is continuously progressing, robotic process automation (RPA) is drawing much corporate attention. While RPA is a popular topic in the corporate world, the academic research lacks a theoretical and synoptic analysis of RPA. Conducting a literature review and tool analysis, we propose in a holistic and structured way four traits that characterize RPA, providing orientation as well as a focus for further research. Software robots automate processes originally performed by human work. Thus, software robots follow a choreography of technological modules and control flow operators while operating within IT ecosystems and using established applications. Ease-of-use and adaptability allow companies to conceive and implement software robots through (agile) projects. Organizational and IT strategy, governance structures, and management systems therefore must address both the direct effects of software robots automating processes and their indirect impacts on firms.
  • Publication
    Self-Tracking and Gamification: Analyzing the Interplay of Motivations, Usage and Motivation Fulfillment
    ( 2019)
    Gimpel, Henner
    ;
    Nüske, Niclas
    ;
    Rückel, Timon
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    ;
    Entreß-Fürsteneck, Matthias von
    The usage of wearable self-tracking devices has emerged as a big trend in lifestyle and personal optimization concerning health, fitness, and well-being. In this context, gamification elements have the potential to contribute to achieving desired user behavior. However, it is not fully understood to which extent the users perceive their self-tracking motivations as being fulfilled through the usage of a wearable self-tracking device, and how gamification affects the interplay of self-tracking motivations, wearable self-tracking device usage, and motivation fulfillment. To address this research gap, we develop a conceptual model and validate it with survey research and structural equation modeling. We find that self-tracking helps users to unexpectedly fulfill motivations without previously striving for them and that significant differences exist between the gamification users and non-users with respect to their motivations by selfentertainment and self-design.
  • Publication
    IT Management in the Digital Age. A Roadmap for the IT Department of the Future
    (Springer International Publishing, 2019)
    Urbach, Nils
    ;
    Ahlemann, Frederik
  • Publication
    The impact of digitalization on the IT department
    ( 2019)
    Urbach, Nils
    ;
    Ahlemann, Frederik
    ;
    Böhmann, Tilo
    ;
    Drews, Paul
    ;
    Brenner, Walter
    ;
    Schaudel, Florian
    ;
    Schütte, Reinhard
  • Publication
    Disentangling the Concept and Role of Continuous Change for IS Research - A Systematic Literature Review
    ( 2019)
    Hinsen, Silvana
    ;
    Jöhnk, Jan
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    To ensure their business success in the digital age, organizations must continuously adapt to an increasingly hypercompetitive environment. Although the topic of continuous change has been addressed by previous research, we perceive a lack of attention on continuous change as an appropriate organizational change approach to tackle the challenges of digital business in the IS domain. Thus, our research goal is to analyze what IS research can learn from extant literature on continuous organizational change in today's business environments. By carrying out a systematic literature review and analyzing 34 relevant papers, we identify and describe five major research streams which explore continuous change from different perspectives. Furthermore, we discuss links to well-known theoretical concepts to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange and we present a research agenda to transfer the identified results into the IS domain. Finally, we provide organizations with guidance to manage the challenges of digital business.
  • Publication
    To measure is to know: Development of an instrument for measuring consulting service value
    ( 2019)
    Oesterle, Severin
    ;
    Buchwald, Arne
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    While their fundamental business model has not changed for many decades, consulting firms are currently faced with serious challenges putting the complete market at the risk of disruption. Given that situation, it is essential for consultancies to understand how value emerges in consulting projects in the eyes of their clients. Turning to the customer perspective, it is also important to understand how value emerges from the relationship with consultancies. While previous literature provides valuable but fragmented starting points to explain the joint value creation in IT consulting projects, we suggested a synthesized conceptual model drawing on the service-dominant logic in a previous article that integrates both the service provider and client perspectives. In this article, we now put forth a measurement instrument that we subjected to a preliminary empirical validation with which the important determinants in both spheres can be assessed to ultimately explain the value of the IT consulting service in a follow-up, large-scale quantitative-empirical validation.
  • Publication
    Introduction to digitalization cases: How organizations rethink their business for the digital age
    ( 2019)
    Urbach, Nils
    ;
    Röglinger, Maximilian
    Digitalization confronts organizations with huge challenges and opportunities. With all economic and societal sectors being affected by emerging technologies, the digital economy is highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Against this backdrop, this book reports on best practices and lessons learned from organizations that succeeded in tackling the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the digital economy. It illustrates how 21 organizations leveraged their capabilities to create disruptive innovation, to develop digital business models, and to digitally transform themselves. These cases stem from various industries and countries, covering the many facets that digitalization may have.
  • Publication
    Juggling the Paradoxes - Governance Mechanisms in Bimodal IT Organizations
    ( 2019)
    Jöhnk, Jan
    ;
    Oesterle, Severin
    ;
    Winkler, Till J.
    ;
    Nørbjerg, Jacob
    ;
    Urbach, Nils
    The fundamental changes associated with digitalization demand businesses and public enterprises to balance exploitative and explorative capabilities in their internal IT function. One approach to balance these paradoxical demands is the adoption of twofold organizational structures often referred to as bimodal IT. While the IS literature has made recent advances in the description and analysis of bimodal organization structures, we still lack a deeper understanding of the inner workings within bimodal IT organizations and the potential tensions between traditional and agile IT. To address this research gap, we adopt IT governance mechanisms as an analytical framework to study two bimodal IT organization cases, one at a law enforcement agency and the other at an automotive company. We analyze data collected through fourteen semi-structured interviews using grounded theory techniques. We first identify challenges associated with the implementation of and the coordination within organization's bimodal IT organizations. We then identify the structural, procedural, and relational governance mechanisms used within these organizations and elucidate how they relate to the categories of challenges. Finally, we identify and describe five novel governance paradoxes of bimodal IT organizations that emerged as core concepts from this research. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.