I shouldn't have to do this: Illegitimate tasks as a stressor in relation to organizational control and resource deficits

The performance of tasks that are perceived as unnecessary or unreasonable, illegitimate tasks, represents a new stressor concept that refers to assignments that violate the norms associated with the role requirements of professional work. Research has shown that illegitimate tasks are associated with stress and counterproductive work behaviour. The purpose of this study was to provide insight into the contribution of characteristics of the organization on the prevalence of illegitimate tasks in the work of frontline and middle managers. Using the Bern Illegitimate Task Scale (BITS) in a sample of 440 local government operations managers in 28 different organizations in Sweden, this study supports the theoretical assumptions that illegitimate tasks are positively related to stress and negatively related to satisfaction with work performance. Results further show that 10% of the variance in illegitimate tasks can be attributed to the organization where the managers work. Multilevel referential analysis showed that the more the organization was characterized by competition for resources between units, unfair and arbitrary resource allocation and obscure decisional structure, the more illegitimate tasks managers reported. These results should be valuable for strategic-level management since they indicate that illegitimate tasks can be counteracted by means of the organization of work.

Dynamics of governance and control in inter-organizational software development

In recent years, development of information systems (IS) has rapidly changed towards increasing division of labor between firms. Two trends are emerging. First, client companies increasingly outsource software development to external service providers. Second, the formerly oligopolistic enterprise application software industry has started to disintegrate into focal partnership networks – so called platform ecosystems. Despite the increasing prominence of IS outsourcing and platform ecosystems, many of these inter-organizational partnerships fail to achieve expected benefits. Ineffective governance and control frequently plays a pivotal role in producing these failures. While designing effective governance and control mechanisms is always challenging, inter-organizational software development projects are often business-critical and exhibit additional dynamics and uncertainty. As a consequence governance and control have to be adapted over time. The three research projects included in this book provide a better understanding of how and why governance and control can be effectively adapted over time. The implications for successful management of inter-organizational software development projects are highly relevant for theory and practice.