Uncovering unintended and shadow practices of users of decision support system dashboards in higher education institutions

Higher education institutions' (HEI) have begun to develop decision support system data dashboards (DSS‐DD) to improve the data‐informed decision making practices of institutional decision makers. This qualitative study examines the practices of decision makers as they engage with DSS‐DD at a large U.S. Midwestern university and uncovers the socio‐technical characteristics that lead to limited or non‐use of dashboards. To examine these practices and characteristics, this study presents a framework grounded in socio‐technical interaction networks from social informatics and sociomateriality from information systems that explores the socio‐technical practices of users within organizations, while acknowledging the impact of the users' socio‐technical contexts on their DSS‐DD practices. The results show that during the design and implementation phases of these dashboards the institutional contexts that the dashboards are meant to inform are often ignored; and that as users interact with these systems they develop unintended and shadow practices that lead to limited or non‐use of the dashboards for decision making purposes. Additionally, the study finds that users' practices are influenced by their local socio‐technical networks, which includes their prior experiences using institutional data, other actors within their institutional unit, and the political and social contexts which shape the users' decision making behavior and data‐use practices.