With the advent of end-user and cloud computing, business users can implement information systems for work practices on their own – either from scratch or as extensions to existing systems. The resulting information systems, however, often remain hidden from managers and official IT units, and are therefore called “shadow IT systems”. When a shadow IT system is identified, the organization has to decide on the future of this system. The study uses a configurational perspective to explain outcomes of shadow IT system identification, as well as the mechanisms and contextual conditions which bring them about. For this purpose, 27 profiles of shadow IT systems were compiled by conducting 35 interviews with respondents from different positions and industries. The analysis gives insight into six distinct context-mechanism-outcome configurations explaining four outcomes that occur after shadow IT system identification, namely phase-out, replacement, continuing as IT-managed system, and continuing as business-managed system. These results contribute to the shadow IT literature and, more broadly, IS architecture and governance streams of the IS literature. They inform IT managers when these weigh decision options for identified shadow IT systems given different contextual conditions.

中文翻译：

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留下阴影：一种解释影子 IT 系统识别后结果的配置方法

随着最终用户和云计算的出现，业务用户可以自己为工作实践实施信息系统——无论是从头开始还是作为现有系统的扩展。然而，由此产生的信息系统往往对管理人员和官方 IT 部门隐藏，因此被称为“影子 IT 系统”。确定影子 IT 系统后，组织必须决定该系统的未来。该研究使用配置视角来解释影子 IT 系统识别的结果，以及导致这些结果的机制和背景条件。为此，通过对来自不同职位和行业的受访者进行 35 次访谈，编制了 27 份影子 IT 系统的概况。该分析深入了解了六种不同的上下文-机制-结果配置，解释了影子 IT 系统识别后发生的四种结果，即逐步淘汰、更换、继续作为 IT 管理系统和继续作为业务管理系统。这些结果有助于影子 IT 文献，更广泛地说，是 IS 文献的 IS 架构和治理流。当这些权衡给定不同上下文条件的已识别影子 IT 系统的决策选项时，他们会通知 IT 经理。