SECRETARIA GENERAL DE ACUERDOS “A”

The thesis makes three main contributions to the literature that highlight whether, how, and why Agile IS affect users’ continuance intentions and – more generally speaking – loyalty. First, understanding Agile IS from a user’s perspective is crucially important both to build a comprehensive theoretical foundation on Agile IS and to put the user and his needs more at the center of all investigations (Brenner et al. 2014). Only few studies have explored this perspective thus far (e.g., Hong et al. 2016). While most of the studies in this field have pushed the user to the sidelines (e.g., Chan and Thong 2009), this thesis clearly contributes to a better understanding of how modifications of software compositions may change users’ perceptions. In particular, we could demonstrate that Agile IS with a limited feature-set at the first release have the potential to increase user’s continuance intentions through successive feature releases compared to monolithic and static IS. We could replicate and confirm this effect in several studies. These findings provide evidence that the user should be thoroughly

considered in research on Agile IS. However, the results do not only underline the central role of the user in IS research. Also they suggest that some user responses to changes in software appear non-rational. Considering that users in most cases respond with higher continuance intentions to Agile IS despite being deprived of features some way through the usage period (compared to users of a feature-complete and monolithic software), the results may be interpreted as possible empirical evidence for a reference point dependency (Kahneman and Tversky 1979). This adds to the notion that users in IS research do not always act fully rational, but may be prone to heuristics and biases (Fleischmann et al. 2014). Finally, our results once again confirm the pivotal role of ECT and the IS Continuance Model in IS research. The results of our studies repeatedly demonstrate a mediation of the positive effect of updates on users’ continuance intentions through the mediation mechanism of disconfirmation with previous expectations, satisfaction, and perceived usefulness. The discovered effect therefore requires an unexpected and positive surprise compared to a previous baseline. This subjective evaluation is clearly in line with theory on bounded rationality of users and therefore again questions the concept of a rational user in IS.

Second, our findings provide evidence in support of the necessity of a fine-grained understanding of IT Artifacts and the joint consideration of users in IS research. This answers the call of several researchers to put the IT Artifact more at the focus of IS research (Benbasat and Zmud 2003). Our findings show that the particular composition of features, changes in the feature-set, and the characteristics of the change have the potential to affect user responses and must be considered when theorizing on IT Artifacts. For example, our results indicate, that the previous endowment of software in terms of the available number of features seems to act as a moderator on the effect of updates on users, by diminishing its magnitude. Also, we could demonstrate that the removal of a specific feature is valued more in absolute (negative) magnitude than the equivalent acquisition of the same feature. This indicates a possible loss- aversion (Kahneman and Tversky 1979). In this setting, we found evidence that the positive effect of updates is only elicited, if users have less expertise regarding the software (i.e., they are novices). These findings again underline the somewhat non-rational nature of user responses in IS research, although experts come closer to rational actors. However, the findings also emphasize the important role of specific feature level compositions of IT Artifacts and changes in it to increase the predictive power of IS theory (Benlian 2015).

Adding to this finding, we could demonstrate that the size of an update (i.e., number of features contained in the update) does not play a significant role for the magnitude of the

effect. However, the frequency of updates does: more frequent updates stimulate an even stronger positive response than less frequent updates do. As a result, features spread over several distinct and thus more frequent updates increase the positive effect even further. Finally, we could show that deliberate design of the update delivery process has the potential to moderate the effect of updates on users. In the case of feature updates, a positive effect was only established when the user was notified of the update before or after the update. In the case of a security update, only the notification after successful installation established a positive effect. Providing a choice to only optionally consume the update diminished any positive effect. Considering all these findings collectively, the results of our studies add to the predominantly monolithic understanding of software by providing a more modular understanding of software as specific compositions of features at a certain point in time that may be subject to change. Moreover, in sum, our findings highlight the necessity to join consideration of the malleable nature of IT Artifacts and the characteristics of its users to fully understand potential consequences.

Third, our overarching contribution lies in the extension of the predominant view of IS in post-adoption literature from a mostly static to a more dynamic perspective by showing how an evolving IS might change users’ attitudes and behaviors over time. Thereby we complement existing IS post-adoption literature and research on digital ecosystems (e.g., Carillo et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2016) through the notion that users’ beliefs and attitudes may change with the advancement of a system. With this finding, we answer the call of several IS scholars to consider the evolution of IS more thoroughly (e.g., Jasperson et al. 2005; Benbasat and Barki 2007). In particular, our results show how changes in IS due to updates, induce changes in users’ beliefs and attitudes towards a system. This result confirms the previous findings of other scholars that an IT Artifact itself can affect users’ beliefs and attitudes during use in later usage stages (e.g., Kim and Malhotra 2005; Kim and Son 2009; Ortiz de Guinea and Markus 2009; Ortiz de Guinea and Webster 2013). Hence our thesis highlights the consequences of the evolving nature of IS. Next, after outlining our theoretical contributions, we continue by highlighting practical and managerial contributions.