Task-technology fit and individual performance
MIS Quarterly
Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity
Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity
Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory
Growing artificial societies: social science from the bottom up
Growing artificial societies: social science from the bottom up
GIS for district-level administration in India: problems and opportunities
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on intensive research in information systems
Complexity Theory and Organization Science
Organization Science
Computational Laboratories for Organization Science: Questions, Validity and Docking
Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory
Unanimity Rule and Organizational Decision Making: A Simulation Model
Organization Science
Reconceptualizing System Usage: An Approach and Empirical Test
Information Systems Research
A Framework for Assessing the Business Value of Information Technology Infrastructures
Journal of Management Information Systems
Understanding Business Process Change Failure: An Actor-Network Perspective
Journal of Management Information Systems
Journal of Management Information Systems
Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling (Princeton Studies in Complexity)
Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity)
Coevolving Systems and the Organization of Agile Software Development
Information Systems Research
The nature of theory in information systems
MIS Quarterly
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
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Although information systems researchers have long recognized the possibility for collective- level information technology use patterns and outcomes to emerge from individual-level IT use behaviors, few have explored the key properties and mechanisms involved in this bottom-up IT use process. This paper seeks to build a theoretical framework drawing on the concepts and the analytical tool of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory. The paper presents a CAS model of IT use that encodes a bottom-up IT use process into three interrelated elements: agents that consist of the basic entities of actions in an IT use process, interactions that refer to the mutually adaptive behaviors of agents, and an environment that represents the social organizational contexts of IT use. Agent-based modeling is introduced as the analytical tool for computationally representing and examining the CAS model of IT use. The operationability of the CAS model and the analytical tool are demonstrated through a theory-building exercise translating an interpretive case study of IT use to a specific version of the CAS model. While Orlikowski (1996) raised questions regarding the impacts of employee learning, IT flexibility, and workplace rigidity on IT-based organization transformation, the CAS model indicates that these factors in individual-level actions do not have a direct causal linkage with organizational- level IT use patterns and outcomes. This theory-building exercise manifests the intriguing nature of the bottom-up IT use process: collective-level IT use patterns and outcomes are the logical and yet often unintended or unforeseeable consequences of individual-level behaviors. The CAS model of IT use offers opportunities for expanding the theoretical and methodological scope of the IT use literature.