Introduction to the Special Issue on “Quo Vadis TAM – Issues and Reflections on Technology Acceptance Research”

IS Research Perspectives aims to introduce and provoke discussion about critical issues in the IS field, from an academic perspective. The articles published in this section are expected to create excitement about how the IS field needs to change (or maintain its status quo) in order to thrive as an intellectual enterprise. As such, we welcome innovative and provocative contributions taking a specific conceptual, theoretical, methodological, or thematic viewpoint of a particular area of interest to the field. This Special Issue, entitled: Quo Vadis TAM - Issues and Reflections on Technology Acceptance Research, is a critical appraisal of Technology Acceptance Model research and its directions. Such an exploration is long overdue given its central place in the past intellectual discourse within the IS field

Information system diffusion in organizations - a control mechanism perspective

Research streams emphasize that after the excitement of adopting a new IS innovation, most do not employ the innovation to its full potential thus creating an assimilation gap. The failure of an IS to be fully diffused in an organization are, in most cases, due to employees resisting and not accepting the implemented innovation. The analysis of control mechanisms in IS research has proved to be a valuable approach to elucidate IS implementation and success experienced by organizations. The control mechanisms can be exercised thro ugh formal and informal modes. However, control mechanism theory have not yet been adopted to examine the process of IS diffusion in organizations. Therefore, there is a need to study the ways in which implemented control mechanisms impacts on the pro cess of diffusion of a Management Information System (MIS). Cooper and Zmud (1990) six stage IS implementation model will be applied to the research to illustrate and investigate the process of diffusion of the MIS. The research method will be an in-depth case study. It is anticipated that investigating IS diffusion from the perspective of control will considerably provide fresh insights in the understanding process of IS diffusion in organizations

There All Along? A Preliminary Meta-Analysis of the Moderating Gender Effects in Technology Acceptance Research

Technology acceptance is one of the most extensive streams of research in the information systems literature. Building on previous work, it has recently been proposed that the gender of information system users moderates the relationships between intention to use a technology and its most important determinants, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A better understanding of the magnitude of this effect and its implications seems important in the development of practical applications of the theory, such as those related to training and motivational interventions. This research reports on a preliminary meta-analysis of extant literature in mainstream journals employing the proportion of men and women in the studies as an indicator of the expected relationships. An explanation of this approach is provided, and preliminary results are discussed

Critical mass and discontinued use of social media

Using simulation, this study compares a critical mass of adopters with a critical mass of those who discontinue their adoption of social media. A network of reflex agents is simulated where each agent has an unchanging threshold and will adopt social media if the number of their friends who have adopted is greater than it. In the first study, the size of the critical mass that adopts is varied, and in the second, the size of the critical mass that discontinues use is varied. The studies show that a critical mass of leavers can cause a community to fail and that this mass can potentially be as small as that needed to influence a community to succeed; although given a certain critical mass, their leaving is less likely to cause failure than their adoption is success. This influence of the critical mass is facilitated by network structure

Sharpening the Ethnographer’s Toolkit: Introducing the Freelist Method to Information Systems Research

Ethnography has been presented as a promising research method for information systems researchers. However, IS research using ethnographic techniques still remains scant. We believe this has occurred for four primary reasons: (1) the techniques needed to conduct effective ethnographic research are often discussed in vague detail; (2) data collection in ethnographic studies is perceived as unfocused and unsystematic; (3) ethnographic studies are perceived as highly time consuming and thus impractical; and (4) IS researchers may not be well-versed in understanding how to make sense of the findings of an ethnographic analysis. In this paper, we address these constraints by introducing a well-established ethnographic method called freelisting to ethnographic research in IS. Specifically, we discuss the essence of freelisting, how it fits into ethnography, and provide an example of how to conduct and analyze a freelist in IS. The benefits of freelisting for IS researchers are also explained

Beyond IT Acceptance

Organizations invest in information technology expecting positive outcomes, but to produce the intended results employees must use the technology. This study applies Adaptive Structuration Theory and Social Construction of Technology frameworks to expand research on the relationship among organizational users and mandatory IT artifacts beyond the initial process of acceptance, which currently constitutes the main paradigm in the IS field. A case study analyzes the mandatory use of an academic portal by lecturers and all the changes that users promote to the artifact and the tasks they perform while using it. Our findings show that if the environment provides flexibility for it, participants refute, adapt replace and complement the artifact that was adopted by the organization, while they appropriate it, in order to improve their efficiency in achieving organizational goals or their own

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF AN INDIVIDUAL\u27S RESISTANCE TO USE AN INFORMATION SYSTEM - EMPIRICAL EXAMINATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Building up on current research investigating an individual’s resistance regarding the use of new information systems this approach develops a Technology Resistance Model for a better understanding of potential users’ resistance intention in the 21st century. The model is evaluated with empirical data of 209 jobseekers who resist using standardized online application forms and the results show that the an individual’s intention to resist is predominately explained by a perceived uselessness of the system but not by the perceived difficulty to use it. Based on these results and a comparison with the Technology Acceptance Model the paper concludes that an inverse construct of the Technology Acceptance Model is not appropriate to understand an individual’s intention to resist using an information system. Therefore the paper calls for a deeper understanding regarding an individual’s intention to resist using a system and identifies possible directions for future research. In general these approaches can be divided into two main areas: methodology and theory. As a consequence the papers discusses directions for future research as the development of a Technology Resistance AND Acceptance Model (e.g. use of semantic differential scales), a Technology Inhibitor Model, the use of different dependant variables as well as a better understanding of an individual’s personality trait resistance (e.g. based on psychology research)

Politically Sensitive IT Practice: A case story of wireless network implementation

Drawing from social perspectives, we narrate a case story of wireless network implementation situated in a socially connected but politically segregated environment. We seek to understand how the interplay between radical IT implementation and organizational structure shapes and reshapes organisational members‟ perception of implementation success and how unintended consequences of popular mobile technology emerge in a politically sensitive workplace. Detailed narrative analysis reveals that many subtle conflicting issues intertwined among various stakeholder groups. Those issues not just reshape how organisational members perceive IT implementation success but also how future IT management take place. The insights gained from this case story thus suggest that a more socially and politically sensitive IT practice in general and wireless network management in particular might be essential in the contemporary service oriented IT environment

Perceptive Users with Attitudes - Some Hueristics on Theorizing

Many existing theories of user perceptions and attitudes towards technology suffer from “over investigation” of users’ attitudes and “under investigation” of the technologies that cause them. This can be the result of a pursuit of generalisability at the expense of accuracy and salience to practice. In this paper, we offer some heuristics for addressing this issue. We propose that salient features of technologies can be identified using affordance theory. The functional affordances of technologies form the basis for users’ descriptive beliefs (perceptions). These in turn form the basis for more generalized beliefs that lead to attitudes. We further suggest that multi-indicator structural models (MISMs), from contemporary psychometrics are highly suitable for modeling this theory area. We offer a brief illustration of how our heuristics could be used to develop a theory