Technology Innovation Management Review (Dec 2012)
Managing Entrepreneurial Employees Who Bring Their Own IT to Work
Abstract
Why do some employees invest their own time and money to acquire consumer information technology (IT) for use in the workplace as corporate IT? This behaviour occurs even when their firms already possess considerable IT resources. Moreover, IT governance policies typically oppose the use of unsanctioned IT within the firm. IT governance assumes that the only IT assets that are relevant to the firm are those that are owned by the firm. However, employees can create value for the firm by combining their personal IT assets with the firm's IT assets. Creating novel asset combinations is consistent with entrepreneurship but entrepreneurship theory does not address this type of voluntary employee entrepreneurship using personal IT assets. This article proposes a link between the theory of the firm and entrepreneurship theory to explain why employees act entrepreneurially. This link is significant because it advances the notion that employees of established firms can be entrepreneurial when they use their own consumer IT as corporate IT. This link is also significant because it suggests that managing employee entrepreneurship requires tolerance of value creation that is emergent and can occur within a firm.
