Immersive Virtual Environments: Understanding it’s Influence on Organizational Routines

Within the last 10 years richer 3-dimensional graphics have increasingly immersed users in virtual environments (VEs). Recently, immersion in VEs is also facilitated by cheaper and better head mounted displays. Immersion benefits individuals as well as organizations because it makes users feel as if they are physically present in the VE. This can reduce costs in industries heavily reliant on visualization, such as the architect, engineering, and construction industry. However, more immersive software and hardware does not necessarily lead to increased use in organizations, exemplified by the lack of organizations using virtual worlds and 3-dimensional computer aided software. While many IS scholars have focused on immersive VEs, the majority have looked into individual factors and applied methods, that are far from practice. Our research introduces theoretical lens of organizational routines and through initial interviews in four organizations, we investigate how the introduction of immersive VEs change organizational routines. We present four vignettes and propose a categorization enabling a better understanding of how artefact specificity and routine divergence influence the use of immersive VEs.