Understanding Theory of Workarounds in Practice

Citations Over Time

Abstract

This study outlines the recent landscape of workaround research as regards the steps of workaround creation by Alter [1]. A workaround happens when a user does a course of actions beyond the formal system to achieve certain goals. The actions could be bypassing internal system procedures or breaking the established policies in response to the perceived system constraints. To this point, one may perceive workaround as an improvisation of the formal system; thus, it introduces both positive and negative outcomes for organisations. Here, the aim of this study is to capture the use of Theory of Workarounds [1] in research to explain the workaround creation. Especially, the application of seven steps mentioned in Theory of Workarounds. For this reason, as suggested by Dennehy and Sammon [2], we gathered ten top cited articles from 2014 and compare them with other ten most recent articles from Google Scholar. Afterward, we categorised those papers using Theory of Workarounds [1] to understand the state of the art of the workaround studies. The contribution of this research is that we demonstrate the application of Theory of Workarounds to capture how researchers explain the workaround creation in their papers. In our best knowledge, this is the first study to do so. Also, we contribute to the Information Systems (IS) body of knowledge as to the understanding of post-IS deployment. At the end of the research, we highlight open research areas in workarounds.

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