IT Consumerization and New IT Practices: Discriminating, Firefighting and Innovating

This paper investigates the impact of IT consumerization on the internal IT department faced with managing it. IT consumerization is employees wanting to use their consumer devices (e.g., iPads, iPhone, SurfacePros) and applications (e.g., iCloud, LinkedIn) for work purposes. Using case studies of organizations in three different stages of consumerizing the workplace, the study highlights the different practices that internal IT departments deploy in each stage. In the conversion stage IT departments discriminate; in the use stage they firefight; and in the competitive stage they innovate. The study offers implications to the IT literature, much of which focuses on a top-down approach to IT implementation. In contrast, our study takes a bottom up approach where end-users introduce new technology to the organization. This bottom up approach likely explains some IT practices uncovered in this research like internal IT departments getting out of the support business, testing less and embracing failure.