An exploratory examination of individual relationships with technology and people

The growth of technology and systems personalisation is leading to increasing personal choice and power. Hence, it becomes increasingly difficult to force people to appropriate, adopt, use, etc., any technology. Relationship marketing sees relations as key to appropriation contexts and that the nature of relations is closely tied to individual identity concerns. Identity literature in IS posits that appropriation or use of technology is based not what the person necessarily is but what they hope to become, which is highly idiosyncratic. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to understand the ‘why’ behind IS phenomena rather than stopping at lists of characteristics. Furthermore, personal construct theory and existentialism posit that quite often individuals’ identity concerns are highly contradictory to their actual everyday actions in moving towards a preferred self. Hence, to progress the relational literature in IS, this thesis employs the following research objective: To elicit and document the relational dimensions of people’s daily work existence at the intersection of people and technology. The findings challenge many fundamental assumptions underlying various theories employed in IS and management, particularly regarding change. They suggest that 1) people are not averse to change, rather, they demand it, 2) inertia depends largely on where the change is coming from as well as where in the individual’s personal construct system that relations with the object tied to the change are strongest or weakest, and 3) identity and existential concerns are at the heart of the explanation. However, this research offers a theoretical lens (existential phenomenology) and methodology (repertory grid plus laddering to core constructs) that provides a way forward. The methodology employs the repertory grid technique followed by laddering to core constructs. Both of these techniques consist of in-depth semi-structured interviews, and are considered qualitative in nature. While these techniques result in dichotomous constructs, the identity and existential concerns are arrived at through iterative interpretation. The methodology provides a way of understanding both relationships and identity concerns about people and technology in a single, easy to use, semi-structured interview, which could provide a more complete picture for other areas of IS research as well