Title: Three essays on users' reactions to information technology
Abstract: Although the extant literature has brought important insight to the study of individual users' reactions to information technology (IT), some limitations remain. Indeed, few studies theorize specifically about the IT artifact and incorporate these theories in the study of IT use. Also, the literature is dominated by an underlying assumption that acceptance of IT is favorable while resistance to IT is unfavorable. Another limitation is that this literature largely adopts a lean conceptualization of IT use and lacks a focus on the process of IT use (e.g. the process by which individuals make new uses of IT features). This dissertation tries to address these limitations and sheds light on important themes related to users' reactions to IT.Our first essay studies users' perceptions with regards to the modifications to an IT that occur after its implementation. Although these modifications potentially influence IT use and its impacts, they have hardly been studied from the end user's perspective. We propose and validate an artifact-focused measure of perceptions of IT modifications based on whether or not a user considers that the changes add new functionalities, improve existing functionalities, remove parts of the system, improve compatibility with other technologies and/or improve the system's speed and reliability. Our proposed measure contributes to studying users' reactions to IT, by focusing on the IT artifact; it also paves the way for further research on the very important and increasingly pervasive phenomenon of IT evolution.Our second essay proposes a framework that focuses on acceptance and resistance, and investigates the diverse set of IT- related behaviors and impacts that may be associated with them. It uncovers nuances obscured by the fact that these variables are generally considered separately, and in abstraction of the organizational context of use. With the concept of organizational intent, we show that resistance and employees' deviation from organizational IT use mandates sometimes benefit the organization. At the same time, acceptance and compliance with organizational IT use mandates may, at times, have adverse consequences. We also highlight scenarios under which employees and organizations can challenge these mandates to enable more favorable impacts. The last essay is an in-depth study of the process of using IT features in new ways, which we call 'enhanced use'. Based on interview data, we identify distinct patterns of enhanced use and the ways these patterns are influenced by task, user and system-related variables. We argue that the locus of innovation for enhanced use often differs according to the analyzability of the task and the type of system used. Also, the extent of substantive use involved in enhanced use depends largely on the complexity of the task at hand and on the IT-related knowledge used. Finally, our analysis suggests that the degree of task interdependencies and the type of system used are often associated with different patterns of adaptation for enacting enhanced use.…
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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