Revisiting the Impact of System Use on Task Performance: An Exploitative-Explorative System Use Framework

How information systems impact task performance has attracted a significant amount of attention from information systems researchers and generated high interest among practitioners. A commonly accepted view is that the potential of information systems must be realized through system use. Nevertheless, existing findings regarding the impact of system use on task performance are not yet conclusive. We attributed this to the various conceptualizations of system use and the unclear mechanisms through which system use influences task performance. Thus, this research attempts to create a better understanding of how system use influences task performance. To this end, we developed an exploitative-explorative system use framework in order to reconcile the various conceptualizations of system use and to depict how both exploitative and explorative system use influences task performance through impacting task innovation, management control, and task productivity. We created an instantiation of the framework using USAGE (exploitative system use) and adaptive system use (ASU, explorative system use). We conducted two empirical studies involving two different populations and using two different technologies. The first study consisted of 212 experienced users of MS Office, whereas the second study employed 372 new users of a video-editing tool. Our findings offer insight into how exploitative system use and explorative system use independently and jointly influence task performance constructs and also have implications for research and practices.