Creating Agile Organizations Through IT: The Influence of Internal IT Service Perceptions on IT Service Quality and IT Agility

Abstract

Businesses continue to make large investments in information technology (IT) resources, and it is crucial for them to implement effective management strategies to better leverage these resources. Modern organizations are increasingly dependent on IT to remain agile and competitive in a rapidly changing market, but there remain gaps in understanding how IT resources support IT agility. Recent IT strategy research highlights the role of IT service climate in driving positive IT service quality, and we extend this work in the form of a theoretical model that relates an organization’s internal IT service perceptions to IT agility. We hypothesize a partially mediated relationship wherein internal IT service perceptions positively affects IT agility, both directly and indirectly, through facilitating positive IT service quality, highlighting the crucial role of IT personnel and their service orientation in provisioning services to enable IT agility. We test our model with an unmatched survey of 400 full-time IT managers and professionals and find strong support for our hypotheses. Our results have important implications for future research and practice, as the IT community continues to seek to adopt effective strategies for managing and leveraging its expensive resources.

Keywords: IT service climate, internal IT service perceptions, IT service quality, IT agility, construct distinctiveness, IT strategy