Exploring HRIS Post-Adoption: A Grounded Theory of Employee-Driven Administrative Innovation in the Context of Kuwait’s Public Sector

The aim of this research is to investigate the development of administrative innovation in relation to post-adoption usage of human resource information system (HRIS) in a public sector organization. This research takes an exploratory and explanatory approach to identifying manifestations of administrative innovation, examining the interaction between initiators of administrative innovation and organizational stakeholders, and identifying motivations and perceived barriers. Grounded theory methodology is employed to investigate administrative employee driven innovation following the adoption of HRIS. The context for the study is a public sector organization, in the banking and finance sector, in Kuwait where HRIS has been adopted and integrated into various human resource (HR) practices. The empirical data consists of thirty-two semi-structured interviews with HRIS users from different organizational levels ranging from managers to ordinary HR employees who use HRIS to perform their daily work tasks. Document analysis was also utilized to support data collection. The results of the study explain how employees use their knowledge of HRIS and their everyday work practices to generate initiatives for modifying or improving existing administrative processes and tasks. Following the principles of grounded theory, in terms of constant comparison and concurrent data collection and analysis, an integrative framework was developed. The framework aggregates the findings representing a series of actions aimed at developing administrative innovation, at the core of which is ‘taking initiative’ as the central phenomenon. ‘Taking initiative’ requires causal conditions and actions/interactions and is affected by intervening and contextual conditions. Subsequently, given the centrality of employee agency in post-adoption innovation, institutional entrepreneurship theory is applied as a theoretical lens to enrich the understanding of the development of administrative innovation. This theoretical lens provides deeper insight by focusing on individuals who can initiate innovative ideas and the actions and interactions they engage in to share and implement their ideas within their institutional context. This thesis contributes to the body of knowledge by focusing on administrative innovation developing in the context of HRIS post-adoption. It provides insight into employee-driven innovation (EDI) and information systems (IS) post-adoption literature. Theoretically, it relates inductively generated findings on the phenomenon of “taking initiative” to innovate to institutional entrepreneurship theory, especially through discussing the conditions that enable individuals to innovate, even from within highly institutionalized organizational settings. Finally, in terms of significance for practice, a number of suggestions are advanced on how to stimulate and manage employee-driven innovation in public sector organizations.