Empower the Workforce, Empower the Company? Citizen Development Adoption

Abstract

IT departments today face a substantial backlog of business innovation-related activities and struggle with a shortage of software developers. Low-code development platforms can help solve these issues by using technology to empower end-users without programming background to participate in the software development process. This trend is referred to as “citizen development.” Through six case studies, this study advances our understanding of the factors that influence organizational citizen development adoption decisions. We use an extended technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, which enhances the explanatory power of the base TOE framework. Our results show that multiple risk perceptions, active top management support, project-based business-IT alignment, centralized IT governance, and business network systems influence organizational citizen development adoption decisions. Based on the results, we discuss academic and practical implications and suggestions for future research.