The influence of shadow IT usage on knowledge sharing

Abstract

Employees increasingly use unauthorized technologies at the workplace, which is referred to as shadow IT. Previous research identifies that shadow IT is often collaborative systems used by employees to collaborate, communicate, and share content with coworkers, clients, or external partners. Based on these previous findings, we propose that shadow IT usage may positively influence organizational knowledge sharing (KS), which is central to knowledge management practices. Thus, this research aims to (1) identify the types and occurrences of shadow IT used by employee in the workplace, (2) investigate how KS (donation and collection) occurs via shadow IT, and (3) investigate how shadow IT influences KS. This is an exploratory study based on a qualitative approach. We performed interviews with IT users to answer the research question. Our findings identify that most of the interviewees use collaborative systems and mobile devices unauthorized by the IT department to share knowledge and communicate with their coworkers. The most common IT cited are WhatsApp and Skype, as well as solutions to store and share content, like Google Drive. In addition, several employees reported using shadow IT mainly because organizations do not provide suitable tools to communicate efficiently. We conclude that shadow IT can facilitate KS, primarily when people are geographically distributed since these unauthorized systems provide real-time communication. Our theoretical contribution is to expand current knowledge about shadow IT and reinforce the importance and prevalence of informal and decentralized KS within organizations. As for the practical implications, our article can help IT managers to better understand the usage of shadow IT and how they can balance the risk and benefits of this phenomenon.

Shadow IT – Systematic Literature Review

“…In general, shadow IT is a workaround where end users increase their efficiency and want to facilitate their day-to-day activities. Mallmann et al [53] divided the occurrences of shadow IT in accordance with device owner and software/solutions. According to their opinion, applications that represent shadow IT can be installed on devices that are owned by the company or the end users themselves.…”

“…This part of shadow IT can be categorized under End user development. Finally, Mallmann et al [53] also add the category of IT usage through cloud services ( Figure 2). Therefore, shadow IT requires much less knowledge and experience in relation to end user development [11].…”

“…Dissatisfaction of employees with the existing ERP system [79] or dissatisfaction during its implementation according to Kerr, Houghton and Burgess [39] provides a fertile ground for the development of shadow (feral) IT. The mentioned authors claim that [13,28,48,52,53] department." to be those vent regular tent that they cessing data."…”

The Social Side of Shadow It and its Impacts: Investigating the Relationship with Social Influence and Social Presence

“…Similarly, shadow IT, often being collaborative technologies, can also mediate the relationship between social presence and individual impacts. Increasing the sense of social presence by using shadow IT can provide several benefits to employees in their work, such as permitting real-time communication, which facilitates information exchange and decision making [10; 25], enabling faster and better collaboration [8], and supporting knowledge sharing among employees [9]. All these individual impacts related to the greater perception of social presence promoted by shadow IT usage directly or indirectly enhance task performance [34].…”

A framework for managing spreadsheet-based end user applications

“…The use of spreadsheets belongs to a much broader area, often referred to in literature as shadow IT, and denotes IT which is not under the control of IT departments. Shadow IT includes different artefacts developed or procured without the knowledge, approval or support of the IT department (Huber et al, 2017;Silic and Back, 2014;Rentrop and Zimmermann, 2012;Behrens, 2009;Spierings et al, 2012;Tambo et al, 2014;Haag and Eckhardt, 2017;Mallmann et al, 2018). Due to their availability and usability (Raković, 2014) spreadsheets feature as one of the main manifestations of shadow IT (Zimmermann et al, 2017) Zimmerman et al (2017 identified that shadow IT should be managed through re-engineering, coordination and registration from the aspects of risk and scope of such IT solutions.…”