Effectiveness of IT Service Management Capability: Value Co-Creation and Value Facilitation Mechanisms

Abstract

Information technology service management (ITSM) has become the prevalent management approach to the provision of IT services worldwide. Researchers and practitioners, however, still lack an understanding regarding through which mechanisms and in which strategic contexts an ITSM capability contributes most to information systems (IS) effectiveness. Grounded in a service-dominant logic, we hypothesize that ITSM capability contributes to IS effectiveness through sustaining the alignment of the IS function with the business and contingent upon organizational IS strategic conservativeness. Data collected from 256 organizations confirms that direct effects from ITSM capability are mediated by IS-business alignment and strengthened by IS strategic conservativeness. Our findings provide evidence for a co-occurrence of value co-creation and value facilitation mechanisms in internal IT service relationships and for a greater value of ITSM capability in stable strategic contexts. Overall, our results contribute a novel understanding to the service literature of the distinct mechanisms and the facilitating contextual contingencies of value creation in IT service relationships.

Key words and phrases:

• information technology service management (ITSM)
• service-dominant logic
• information systems (IS) effectiveness
• IS-business alignment
• IS strategy
• IS conservative
• value co-creation
• value facilitation

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the JMIS Editor-in-Chief, the Associate Editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable contributions during the review process.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at 10.1080/07421222.2019.1599513

Notes

1. Marrone et al. [50] listed various indicators of a growing ITIL adoption, particularly the size of the professional association IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), the robust attendance of itSMF conferences, and the number of ITIL Foundation certificates granted to individuals.

2. In a meta-analysis, Gerow et al. [25] coded the IS-business alignment construct by Tiwana and Konsynski [67] as covering intellectual alignment and operational alignment types. They also showed that both types of alignment are closely related and hence can be conceptualized as a single construct.

3. Our labelling of service planning, service transition, and service operation phases was inspired by the phases/domains of the Microsoft Operations Framework (plan) and ITIL (service transition and service operation), respectively.

4. The scope of IT service management (ITSM) is not restricted to the IS function. Often, ITSM practices are shared with ITSM professionals on the business side. The organizations to which the respondents in our sample reported pertain to the business side and were substantially smaller, which indicates that these respondents may occupy roles that involve both business responsibilities and ITSM responsibilities.

5. The organization owning the ITIL framework accredits licensed examination institutes to examine individuals and to reward credits and titles according to a qualification scheme with five levels: foundation, practitioner, intermediate, expert, and master.

6. The 22 matched-pair respondents represent 30 percent of the 73 respondents who had voluntarily provided names and emails. Our follow-up inquiry included the use of email and phone.

7. We further calculated a total effect moderation model (reported in Online Supplement E) and ruled out that the moderating effect of conservativeness on the capability-effectiveness relationship results from moderation of the alignment effectiveness link.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Till J. Winkler

Till J. Winkler ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor of Information Technology Management and Digitalization in the Department of Digitalization at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Prior to obtaining a Ph.D. in Information Systems from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, he worked as a management consultant at Capgemini’s Chief Information Officer Advisory Services. His research on IT governance, cloud computing, and digital health has been presented at major Information Systems conferences and appeared in journals including Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly Executive, Health Policy and Technology, and others. He serves on the editorial board of Business & Information Systems Engineering.

Jochen Wulf

Jochen Wulf ([email protected]) is a lecturer at the Institute of Information Management, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. He was awarded a grant of the International Postdoctoral Fellowship program while being an assistant professor at the University of St.Gallen. He obtained a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Dr. Wulf’s research on socio-technical aspects of big data analytics, consumer-centric information systems, and IT service management has been published in such journals as Information Systems Journal, Information & Management, MIS Quarterly Executive, Business & Information Systems Engineering and Electronic Markets. He has several years of consulting experience in the areas of IT service management, digital consumer services, and business analytics.