Speaker: Steffi Haag

Abstract: Novel information technologies (ITs), such as large language models (e.g., ChatGPT) and third-party cloud services (e.g., Dropbox), offer users an increasing variety of action possibilities, i.e., affordances. Organizational IT policies, however, often specify their actualization—i.e., turning those affordances into action—as undesired. Organizations face the challenge that to reach their goals, employees still frequently take advantage of these affordances by using undesired ITs and thereby deviate from IT policies. Although prior work has extensively studied how goal-oriented users actualize affordances that are associated with outcomes that support organizational goals, little attention has been paid to the structures, mechanisms, and conditions underlying affordances that deviate from organizational IT policies. 
In my talk, I will present how we conceptualized these affordances as deviant affordances. Leveraging the orders of change framework and using a multimethod research design integrating interview and experimental studies, we further identified three key mechanisms underlying deviant affordances—i.e., tension, deadlock, and actualization mechanisms—that can link together to produce a deviant outcome supporting both the users’ individual goal and an organizational goal. In the end, I will explain the importance of users’ perceived deadlock in stimulating the generation of deviant outcomes that support organizational goals through improving task, contextual, and innovative job performance. 

Short Bio: Prof. Dr. Steffi Haag is a professor of digital innovation and entrepreneurship at the Institute of Computer Science at Heinrich Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf.
She investigates the tensions that arise between managing digital innovation and cybersecurity, taking, in particular, the user perspective. Her research has been published, among others, in MIS Quarterly, Information & Management, or the Journal of Business Economics, and in the proceedings of leading IS conferences, such as the International Conference on Information Systems. She is a Schöller Fellow and received several awards for her research, among others the Hermann Gutmann Award 2023, the HMD Best Paper Award 2018 and the Research Award in Data Protection and Data Security 2017.
At HHU, she bridges the faculties of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Business Administration and Economics and collaborates with the Center for Entrepreneurship Düsseldorf to inspire computer science and business students to start their own digital venture.