Social Influence on Employees’ Understanding of a New Information Technology

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Institution Granting Degree

University of Western Ontario

Cedarville University School or Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Nicole Haggerty

Second Advisor

Christopher Higgins

Third Advisor

Moez Limayem

Keywords

Social influence, technology adoption, emotion, coping, change management, system implementation, emotion, stress and coping, communication.

Abstract

Social influence is powerful for shaping or modifying individual attitude and behaviour. The wealth of knowledge in social influence has been applied across several disciplines to explain changes in attitude and behaviour. However, social influence is not a simple, unified concept (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955; Kelman, 1958). My literature review indicated that the majority of technology adoption (or acceptance) research has primarily investigated the impact of normative influence on user attitude or behaviour. Particularly, Subjective Norm has been treated as a synonym of social influence in some studies. Little is acknowledged that the path between Subject Norm and Intention at best reflects normative influence. The studies that did investigate informational social influence were characterized by multiple conceptualizations and operationalizations, each with its own strengths and limitations. In addition, these studies did not account for employees' active information seeking in forming their beliefs of a new information technology. In addressing these issues, I also attended to the role of user emotion to curb the tendency of emphasizing user cognition (e.g., Perceived Usefulness) over emotion in the technology adoption literature. Combining Social Information Processing Theory (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978), Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Stone and Neale, 1984), and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003), this thesis departs from previous technology adoption studies by emphasizing the role of social information and its impact on employees' cognitive, emotional, and behavioural response to a new technology. Three studies were conducted. The first study, composed of thirteen semi-structured interviews and observation, was conducted in a health care organization where mission-critical information systems were being implemented. The goal was to establish situated understanding of employees' social information processing. A conceptual framework was generated from the findings, and then transformed into a variance model. In the second study, one new scale was developed, and six existing ones were modified. The goal of the third study was to determine the extent to which employees' response to a new technology was affected by social information, with field data collected through an online survey. 1445 alumni from Richard School of Business were invited to participate, yielding a total response rate of 16.7%. SmartPLS (version 2.0) was used for testing the variance model. As predicted, social information obtained through both formal and informal communication directly affects an employee's assessment of a new technology. The quality of formal communication predicts Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Resources, and Subjective Norm. Word-of-Mouth, the operationalization of informal communication, predicts only Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Resources. Employees' anxiety toward the new technology is directly influenced by the individual's assessment of Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Resources. Employees' enthusiasm toward the new technology is directly related to the assessment of Perceived Usefulness and Word-of-Mouth. Finally, anxiety toward the new technology prompts the individual to seek social support. Enthusiasm, on the other hand, prompts the individual to use the technology.

Author Type

Faculty

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