Leadership Enactment for Information System Acceptance: an Explanation from a Sensemaking Perspective

Information system (IS) projects have been seen to be failing at an alarmingly high rate. The prevailing explanations of IS failure have had only a limited success. Thus, the time may be right to look at the reasons for IS failure through an alternative perspective. This paper proposes that IS success should be explained in terms of managerial leadership intervention, from the sensemaking perspective. Managers are responsible for workplace outcomes; thus, it may be appropriate to explain their role in IS success as well. The sensemaking perspective can explain IS success through holistic user involvement, a concept which critiques of existing explanations have stated to be a requirement for explaining IS failure. This paper proposes a framework combining the theory of enactment and leadership enactment to theorize managerial leadership intervention for “IS success.” The proposed explanation postulates that the managerial leader’s envisioning of the future transaction set influences the liberation of the follower and cast enactment, while liberating followers and cast enactment constitute manager sensegiving. The managerial leader’s sense-giving influences follower sensemaking. Follower sensemaking, under the influence of managerial sensegiving, will lead to followers’ IS acceptance, and that constitutes IS success at the individual level. Further, collective level IS acceptance constitutes IS adaption/success, and this will influence the leader’s sensegiving, for the next round of sensemaking.

Scale Development: Measuring Job-Family Incivility

The main contribution of this paper is the development of the job-family incivility scale. This paper seeks to explore the complex inter-relationships between workplace incivility and family incivility dimensions of job-family incivility by examining the dynamic processes by which job-family incivility is initiated and sustained using a scale development approach. In doing so, the paper highlights the absence of valid and reliable measures that estimate the compound effect of workplace incivility and family incivility – referred to as job-family incivility. A scale development process introduced by Quazi et al. (2016) is presented and stages in the construction of the scale are discussed including measures of validity and reliability. The findings of the study demonstrate the validity and reliability of the job-family incivility scale developed by the current researchers. The main aims of this research are to emphasize the impact of workplace incivility and family incivility on the employees in the work environment, and to discuss the techniques that can be used to mitigate such detrimental activities.

The Impact of an Identity Based Destination Image on Destination Loyalty: with Special Reference to Sri Lanka as a Tourist Destination

Destination loyalty and destination image are the two major components used in measuring brand performance in the Consumer Based Brand Equity model (CBBE). Measuring brand performance is one of the major streams in branding literature. This study conceptualized destination brand image as a stakeholder co-created value, which is a new conceptualization in branding literature. Thus, brand community associations were added to represent the stakeholder perspective, which includes functional associations, symbolic associations, and experiential associations, all of which ultimately constitute the dimensions of an identity based destination image. A new scale for identity based destination image was developed by conducting an exploratory factor analysis using principal component analysis with promax rotation. This method used 211 responses and measured the impact of identity based destination image on destination loyalty using another 260 responses. The theoretical contribution of this study is the development of a new scale to measure identity based destination image with the addition of brand community associations. Also, brand community associations have been verified as an important and integral dimension of identity based destination image. Thus, identity based destination image can be used as a strong predictor of destination performance. Therefore, destination marketers of Sri Lanka can focus on a combination of functional, symbolic, experiential, and brand community associations when coming up with promotional campaigns to promote Sri Lanka as an attractive tourist destination.

Flex-Work and Work-Life Balance: Effects of Role Conflicts and Work-Life Support Organizational Culture

Although the direct effect of flex-work on work-life balance is well documented, previous theoretical explanations and empirical findings related to the relationship have been inconsistent. Thereby, drawing on the job border theory, the role accumulation theory and the human ecology theory, the current study attempts to examine the effect of flex-work on work-life balance by exploring the mediating effect of role conflicts, and the moderating effect of organizational culture. The study was quantitative, and a cross-sectional survey design was followed. The data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The convenience sampling technique was used to select the sample, and the final sample consisted of 450 flex-workers from nine IT companies in Sri Lanka. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with the aid of AMOS. It was found that flex-work is significantly related to role conflicts, which in turn has an impact on work-life balance. Further, role conflict is found to be a partial mediator, and work-life support organizational culture to be a significant moderator. Finally, it is concluded that though flex-work creates role conflicts which hinder work-life balance, employees could achieve a better balance between work and life in an organizational culture that supports work-life balance. The study makes a major theoretical contribution by addressing the inadequacy of the job border theory in explaining flex-work. The study supports the argument that flex-workers are not border crossers, but rather that they have no borders, and concludes that an organizational culture that supports work-life balance must be considered when explaining the effect of flex-work on work-life balance. It is suggested that managers and practitioners establish such a culture before introducing flex-work to employees.