Organizational Support for Innovative Use of IT: A Slack Resources Perspective

With the increasing pervasiveness of Information Systems (IS), research on innovative use of IT is gaining momentum. Research shows that intrinsic motivation is a key predictor of innovative use of IT; it is, however, inconclusive as some scholars have not found a significant relationship between users’ intrinsic motivations and their use of utilitarian IS. Organizational support has been found to be a facilitating factor for the relationship between intrinsic motivation and innovative use of IT, a deviating behaviour associated with risk. The complex, emergent, and iterative nature of innovating with IT, however, warrants specific support beyond verbal encouragement for users. This article applies the theory of slack resources to conceptualize the environmental support required for the innovative use of IT. The article also explores the impact of managerial framing by which availability of environmental IS slack resources is communicated to employees on innovation with IT