Effects of IT-based Changes on the Complexity of an Organizational Routine

Information technologies are expected to improve organizational routines in a number of ways, yet their implementations often lead to unexpected, unintended, and even undesired effects. In this research, we investigate how IT-based changes affect the complexity of an organizational routine over time, that is, the number of ways through which the routine can be performed. We present the findings of a computationally-intensive research study of a customer onboarding routine at a financial institution in Central Europe. To this end, we investigate how IT-based changes in the associated low-code platform affect the dynamics of how the routine is performed over the course of 2 years. We explain the effects of IT-based change on the routine’s complexity along four core dimensions—the type of change, the strength of the effect, and the temporal unfolding of the effect and the permanence of effect—, where each dimension is characterized by different change patterns. We further distinguish between two types of IT-based effects: intended and unintended effects.