TY - JOUR

T1 - One tool to rule? – A field experimental longitudinal study on the costs and benefits of mobile device usage in public agencies

AU - Lemmer, Kristina

AU - Jahn, Katharina

AU - Chen, Adela

AU - Niehaves, Bjoern

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors

PY - 2023/6/1

Y1 - 2023/6/1

N2 - With the rising number of mobile technologies used in work- and private-life domains, opportunities, and challenges of mobile device usage in daily lives arise. Against this background, we strive to investigate how corporately provided mobile devices, i.e., tablets, affect work-life conflict and innovation behavior of public sector employees over time. We analyze employees in German public agencies due to their high intrinsic motivation goals alongside strict working schedules, regulations, and payments in contrast to the employees of the private sector. Our research pursues a sequential explorative multi-method approach of conducting a field experiment with qualitative and quantitative data. Twenty employees were divided into two equal groups: 1.) employees with tablets, 2.) employees without tablets. After analyzing the interviews and survey data using methods from grounded theory, we found that a) digital competences can create a bottleneck for employees' innovation behavior, b) corporately provided mobile devices (COPE) decrease employees work-life conflict despite increasing their workload, and c) COPE-IT can support innovation behavior of employees in public agencies, assisting them in keeping up their efficient work when work demands are high. All these effects can be mediated by the development of employee's ownership towards their COPE-IT.

AB - With the rising number of mobile technologies used in work- and private-life domains, opportunities, and challenges of mobile device usage in daily lives arise. Against this background, we strive to investigate how corporately provided mobile devices, i.e., tablets, affect work-life conflict and innovation behavior of public sector employees over time. We analyze employees in German public agencies due to their high intrinsic motivation goals alongside strict working schedules, regulations, and payments in contrast to the employees of the private sector. Our research pursues a sequential explorative multi-method approach of conducting a field experiment with qualitative and quantitative data. Twenty employees were divided into two equal groups: 1.) employees with tablets, 2.) employees without tablets. After analyzing the interviews and survey data using methods from grounded theory, we found that a) digital competences can create a bottleneck for employees' innovation behavior, b) corporately provided mobile devices (COPE) decrease employees work-life conflict despite increasing their workload, and c) COPE-IT can support innovation behavior of employees in public agencies, assisting them in keeping up their efficient work when work demands are high. All these effects can be mediated by the development of employee's ownership towards their COPE-IT.

KW - Corporately-owned-personally-enabled

KW - Innovation behavior

KW - Longitudinal study

KW - Psychological ownership

KW - Work-life conflict

KW - Informatics

KW - Business informatics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85160251704&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/555ede52-ed10-3514-adbb-076c46c77fae/

U2 - 10.1016/j.giq.2023.101836

DO - 10.1016/j.giq.2023.101836

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 40

JO - Government Information Quarterly

JF - Government Information Quarterly

SN - 0740-624X

IS - 3

M1 - 101836

ER -