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The sample comprises mostly women working in
large organizations in various roles. Their
organizations are characterised by complexity,
though informal coordination mechanisms based on
direct communication are widespread and overlap to
almost all other mechanisms (rules, procedures,
objectives etc.). Thus, complexity does not
necessarily combine with high formalization; on the
contrary, there is room for direct communication and
human contact. Moreover, women mostly work in
teams and some of them refer to a community of
practice in her job, underlying the importance of
professional links, both within and outside the
organization. This trait is amplified among the female
DiDIYer, concentrated in a few organizational areas,
and in particular in those functions that connect the
organization to the external environment, such as
Research and Development, Marketing and Customer
Service. Thus, organizational complexity and
connections with the external environment are the
emerging characteristics of the female DiDIYers’
workplace. Knowledge sharing and creation within
organic and participative cultures, also through
communities of practice, are also important features.
In the sample women perceive themselves, on
average, as moderately expert, whereas the DiDIYers
rate their digital expertise as higher, even if all declare
to have acquired their digital skills mainly through
field experience and self-training. Therefore, self-
motivation appears to be an important driving force
in developing digital skills. It’s interesting to notice
that not only women that are engaged in technological
activities, but also those who apply these abilities for
recreational goals declare a higher level of digital
expertise than average, showing that gamification
plays an important role in acquiring digital skills and
that it can be a successful tool in training people in
large organizational contexts. However when it
comes to DiDIY activities, game is no longer a driver:
female DiDIYers are pushed also by innovation,
personal intuition and experimentation and, above all,
by professional challenges. Therefore this study
suggests that gamification can play an important role
in approaching digital technologies and training basic
digital skills, but at a higher level of competences
gives way to other levers, in particular to the appeal
of innovation and personal and professional
challenges.
Women in the sample consider digital
technologies as an almost salvific tool. In more
details, female DiDIYers describe their attitude
towards digital technologies with the concepts of
awareness, curiosity and innovativeness, confirming
that the awareness of being a digital expert is a
fundamental trait of DiDIYers. Moreover, passion
and pleasure demonstrate that women DiDIYers are
not only technology adopters but above all expert
amateur (Kuznetsov and Paulos, 2010).
In more details, the regression analysis highlights
that the perceived level of digital skills is a predictor
of a positive attitude towards digital technologies
whereas staff’s age and organizational complexity
aren’t. This result shows that organizations - and
public administration as well - can favour digital
transformation through their employees’ digital skills
training and manage a successful transition even
within a context of workforce ageing. In any case, so
far, personal and traditional relationships are
preferred to virtual computer-mediated ones, even
among DiDIYers. In this sense the human contact is
probably an irreplaceable component of wellbeing,
both in the workplace and in social life and no
substitution effects of digital technologies on human
relationships is accepted or expected.
Finally, female DiDIYers’ mindset is that of
passionate people, emotionally involved, educated
and aware of the high value of DiDIY outputs. At the
same time, they are proud and conscious of their
potential contribution to the improvement of their
lives and their workplace. In their opinion the
developing technology feeds on creative experimen-
tation and becomes almost a vision of the world.
This study aims at advancing the knowledge of
the DiDIY phenomenon in the gender domain.
However, it has several limitations They include
issues related to: (a) sampling, (b) participants’ level
of honesty and accuracy; (c) the study was also
limited to one country (Italy) and (d) mainly big
public corporations. Nonetheless, the study
contributes to shedding some light on the relation
women-technologies and, moreover, on the existence
and the actual characteristics of female DiDIYers in
complex organisation.
The results acknowledge some distinctions
between female workers and female DiDIYers,
outlining the emerging characteristics of the female
DiDIYers’ profile. Nevertheless, our research does
not outline gender-related differences. Further
research comparing men and women working within
the same organizations could outline those
differences. The study suggest that DiDIY might have
a direct impact on firms’ performance. A deeper
knowledge of the phenomenon within the functional
areas where it is concentrated would enable insight
(Anwar, et al., 2017; McDonald, 2017) on how
organizations can engage female employees in
DiDIY to improve performance and workers’
satisfaction.
KMIS 2018 - 10th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
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