Manju Ahuja

This article discusses the diversity[1], equity, and inclusion (DEI) implications of different conference formats. It also presents implications for a closely related factor – the sense of belonging to AIS as experienced by members of different regions. It offers suggestions that go beyond these models and how they may address DEI concerns. [1]Diversity here refers to not only the visible characteristics such as race, gender, or age, but also to invisible characteristics of culture, background, or nationality.

One of the critical success factors in information technology outsourcing projects is how partners learn through interactions with each other. This learning facilitates the complex problem-solving processes and enables partners to take different perspectives, explore alternatives, and seek innovation in outsourcing projects. For this learning to occur, partners must strive to enhance collaboration, but generally, collaboration is viewed too narrowly as partners engage in coordination and cooperation independently of each other. Our framework suggests that learning is more effective when partners collaborate by cooperating to pursue jointly determined goals and coordinating to adjust their actions toward these goals. This study compares the independent model of collaboration with the interdependent model. The interdependent model suggests that coordination and cooperation mechanisms are interdependent and jointly influence learning outcomes. The findings show that the interdependent model provides a better explanation of the impact of coordination and cooperation mechanisms on relational learning than the independent model. This finding provides a more comprehensive understanding of relationship dynamics between partners. It also provides guidance for developing collaboration mechanisms that help synergize coordination and cooperation. Our study further shows that the perceptions of coordination and cooperation mechanisms are not symmetric between clients and vendors.

This paper presents a framework that investigates the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) permeability on work and family outcomes for dual-career couples in the context of Work-from-home (WFH). The study shows that as couples rely on ICTs to manage work, family responsibilities, and coordinate with each other, they may experience cognitive and emotional fatigue due to the limits of human resources. The framework suggests that the degree of ICT permeability in WFH situations is positively related to ICT fatigue, which can lead to avoidance and conflict between partners. Additionally, the study examines the effect of ICT permeability on work engagement and satisfaction through goal progress. We find strong support for our model, providing empirical evidence of resource allocations for employees who have pivoted to WFH with ICTs. The model was tested using a 10-day diary study of dual-career couples in live-in partnerships. The paper contributes to the literature on WFH phenomenon, which has been enabled by advanced ICTs such as emailing, messaging, and video conferencing. In practice, we provide guidance to organizations on technology use in the WFH environment.

Given the pervasiveness of mobile technologies, it is important for organizations to gain a better understanding of the potential benefits and unexpected negative consequences of mobile use. Recent research outlined that 76% of employees in the United States handled work-related e-mails during nonwork time, and this phenomenon has been further amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which emphasized the pivotal role of constant connectivity and distributed work arrangements. Our research aims at providing a better understanding of why individuals engage in excessive use of mobile devices for work purposes during nonwork time and to elucidate the effects of such behavior. Our results show that investing time and energy in family demands during work time reduces individuals’ ability to fulfill job demands and leads to excessive mobile use during nonwork time. Such excessive use increases the individual perception productivity, but it comes at a cost in terms of physiological, psychological, and relational well-being because it prevents individuals to restore their energies. Our results show also that a competitive climate within the organization exacerbates such negative effects on well-being, thus elucidating the pivotal role of organizational policies and interventions in supporting a responsible use of mobile technologies.

This chapter provides a reflection on my career journey regarding gender and IT research themes. In the backdrop of various studies related to this issue, I discuss my views on where we are today, and what more needs to be done. I provide the context and circumstances surrounding the genesis of my conceptual paper on gender in IT (Ahuja, 2002) and the research it generated. I focus in detail on the research related to the specific issue of work-life balance (WLB) and its relationship to career persistence and advancement of women in IT. Most of this work is framed in the context of western, and more specifically, the US culture. I conclude with a discussion of the caregiving crisis as the pandemic gave rise to the Work From Home phenomenon, transforming the nature of work and how it affected women’s employment status.

Many factors may influence entrepreneurial persistence in various contexts. For example, scholars find that family business entrepreneurs are more persistent than other entrepreneurs. However, the reasons why they are more persistent are not as well known. Utilizing a conjoint experiment with 64 entrepreneurs and 376 decisions, this paper examines the influence of socioemotional wealth (SEW) on persistence decisions in a family business context. The results of the Hierarchical Linear Modelling show that the expected financial returns, expected non-financial benefits, expected switching costs, and probability of expected outcomes influence entrepreneurial persistence decisions. Further, family business entrepreneurs with higher levels of SEW focus more on non-financial benefits when facing alternative opportunities. This study also provided empirical evidence for different dimensions of SEW. The results show that the emotional attachment of family members and the renewal of family bonds to the firm are effective indicators, which provide a direct measurement of SEW. The findings of this study increase scholarly understanding of both entrepreneurial persistence literature founded in threshold theory and SEW literature.