Shadow IT Use, Outcome Effects, and Subjective Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Using shadow IT may be seen as either a form of organizational misbehavior or proactive and creative problem-solving. These perceptions have implications for the subjective evaluation of subordinate performance. In our experiment, participants choose whether to award a bonus to an employee when different IT systems are used across different outcome levels. We find that employees using shadow IT are less likely to receive the bonus in both high and low outcome conditions relative to employees using the normal IT system, suggesting that managers consider shadow IT usage an organizational misbehavior which casts a negative light on employee performance.