...is argued that individuals form beliefs about their use of information technologies within a bread milieu of influences emanating from the individual institutional and social contexts in which they interact with IT. We examine the simultaneous effects of these three sets of influences on beliefs about usefulness and ease of use in the context of a contemporary technology targeted at autonomous knowledge workers. Our findings suggest that beliefs about technology use can be influenced by top management commitment to new technology and the individual factors of personal innovativeness and self-efficacy. Surprisingly, social influences from multiple sources exhibited no significant effects. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

Keywords: Technology adoption, technology beliefs, belief antecedents

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that organizations increasingly depend on information technology (IT) for the execution of a variety of operational, tactical, and strategic processes (Applegate et al. 2003). However, although senior managers might make primary adoption decisions related to IT, it is the individuals within firms who are the ultimate users and consumers of the technology. Thus, the true benefits and impacts of IT are contingent on the extent to which individual users appropriate and use IT in their ongoing work activities that, in turn, contribute to organizational productivity.

Not surprisingly then, the determinants of individual acceptance and use of information technologies in organizations continue to be a significant area of inquiry for IS researchers (Agarwal 2000). A variety of theoretical models have attempted to develop explanations of this phenomenon, with each garnering varying levels of theoretical and empirical support. Within these studies, a central construct and recurrent theme is the notion of an individual's cognition about the outcomes associated with the use of the target technology, also referred to in the literature as beliefs (e.g., Ajzen and Fishbein 1980; Ajzen and Madden 1986; Davis 1989; Davis et al. 1989). Beliefs represent the cognitive structures that an individual develops after collecting, processing, and synthesizing information about an information technology, and incorporate individual assessments of various outcomes associated with technology use. Beliefs have been shown to have a profound impact on subsequent individual behaviors toward information technology. Hence, the belief formation process is clearly worthy of further investigation (Agarwal 2000).

Although prior empirical studies have traced some of the factors that drive beliefs (e.g., individual differences, managerial interventions in the form of training, and situational factors) (Agarwal 2000), most of these studies have chosen to focus upon a specific and limited set of antecedents (Agarwal and Prasad 1999; Venkatesh 2000; Venkatesh and Davis 2000). The fundamental argument made in this research note is that individuals form beliefs about information technologies within a milieu of influences emanating from the institutional and social context in which they interact with information technologies. Yet, extant research has not examined how these factors collectively shape individual beliefs about information technologies within the context of a single empirical study. The primary purpose of this note, therefore, is to present empirical evidence that institutional forces, social forces, and individual characteristics exhibit significant and differential impacts on two key individual beliefs about the use of information technologies: beliefs related to usefulness and ease of use. Research hypotheses are investigated through an empirical study of the acceptance of Internet technologies by autonomous knowledge workers for use in a key work process.

The remainder of this note is organized as follows. The following section describes the theoretical frame for the study and develops the research hypotheses. The methodology used to test the hypotheses, including the study context and sample, construct operationalization, and results are presented next. The fourth section discusses the results, including the significant and non-significant findings, while the final section reflects on the theoretical and practical implications that ensue.

Theoretical Background and Research Hypotheses

Several theoretical bases inform the conceptual frame for this study. Figure 1 presents a graphic representation of this frame, which essentially suggests that an individual's beliefs about technology use are influenced by three dominant sources of influence at varying distance from internal psychological processes: institutional influences, social influences, and individual factors. It is important to point out that we are not hypothesizing that the belief drivers themselves are causally related. Rather, we are suggesting that it is useful, from a conceptual perspective, to begin to develop a taxonomy of such factors by categorizing them on the basis of how distal they are from the target of technology acceptance, viz., the individual user. Beliefs about IT use represent the core dependent variables for this research. The discussion below elaborates upon each of the key constructs.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Beliefs about Information Technology Use

Perceptions about the characteristics of technology are not invariant across individuals. Indeed, individuals perceive a new technology from the vantage point of their own internal cognitive processes and develop beliefs about them. Technology acceptance models such as the technology acceptance model (TAM; Davis et al. 1989) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA; Ajzen and Fishbein 1980), upon which TAM is based, dominate the IS literature and suggest that the influence of all other variables on technology acceptance outcomes is mediated by individual beliefs about technology use. However, while there is considerable agreement that beliefs drive usage behavior, and while numerous studies have established the significance of the impact of beliefs on intentions and usage, more work is needed to understand the determinants of beliefs (Agarwal and Prasad 1999; Venkatesh and Davis 2000). Pragmatically, such examinations are warranted because while beliefs are internal, psychological constructs, their determinants are external variables that may be controlled through appropriate managerial interventions.

There is considerable support in the literature for the importance of beliefs in technology acceptance behavior. Such beliefs have been utilized to both explain system usage (Adams et al. 1992; Moore and Benbasat 1991) and usage intentions (Davis et al. 1989; Mathieson 1991). In general, perceived usefulness (beliefs concerning instrumental outcomes associated with technology use) and perceived ease of use (beliefs that technology use will be relatively free of cognitive burden) have recurred as highly salient predictors of key acceptance outcomes in prior empirical examinations of technology acceptance. Given the recurrence of these beliefs, we focus on usefulness and ease of use as the two primary dependent variables.

In our research model (Figure 2), consistent with the theoretical arguments underlying TAM (Davis et al. 1989), we anticipate direct impacts of perceived ease of use on perceived usefulness. When individuals perceive the technology to be relatively free of cognitive effort, they will view it as releasing important cognitive resources that may be productively applied to other activities. In other words, they are more likely to perceive the technology to be useful in their work activities.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Based on these arguments, we test the following hypothesis:

H1: Beliefs about the ease of use of a technology have a significant positive influence on beliefs about the usefulness of the technology.

The Construction of Beliefs

What causes individuals to construct beliefs about a specific information technology? In order to sort out the range of factors that shape these mental models, we propose the conceptualization of concentric sources of influence (see Figure 1), starting with the most proximate set of factors: individual characteristics. Next lies a more distal set of influences, namely those emanating from the social milieu within which the individual is situated. Finally, the most distal set of influences are the result of institutional forces that surround the individual. It is important to emphasize that our theorizing is focused on the use of IT by individuals embedded within an organizational context, and not on the personal use of IT for non-work related activities that might occur, for example, at home. Furthermore, we restrict our scope to IT that is initially adopted by senior management (such as an ERP or a CRM system) and then needs to be diffused more broadly throughout the organization. Finally, our goal is to demonstrate the relevance of factors belonging to all three antecedent categories within a single empirical study. Thus, the choice of specific factors is driven by their relative prominence in the research literature, and the factors are offered as illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Sources of Influence: Institutional Factors

The role of institutional factors in influencing individual behavior toward technology has long been a subject of interest in IS research. As noted over two decades ago, "MIS can and does fail where ... organizational factors are ignored by system designers" (Robey 1979). In the effort to understand technology use, numerous attributes of organizations have been studied, including user training (Fuerst and Cheney 1982; Leonard-Barton 1987; Raymond 1988; Sanders and Courtney 1985); knowledge management (Boynton et al. 1994; Pennings and Harianto 1992); and organizational support (Delone 1988; Leonard-Barton and Deschamps 1988; Monge et al. 1992). Collectively, these studies suggest that institutional factors have a highly significant influence on individual technology use. Among the range of institutional factors proposed in prior work, our research model focuses on managerial commitment and support, the importance of which has been alluded to by numerous scholars (Yoon et al. 1995; Zmud 1984).

Although prior research has unequivocally established the importance of management support for technology use, less work has specifically linked this construct to beliefs about the technology (exceptions include Igbaria, Guimaraes, and Davis [1995] and Igbaria et al. [1997]). However, institutional theory provides the conceptual underpinnings of how and why the thoughts and actions of individuals within organizations are significantly influenced by the prevailing organizational norms, values, culture, and history. Scott (1995; see also Orlikowski 1992) identifies three ways in which the institutional milieu influences individual cognition and subsequently behavior: through processes of signification, legitimization, and domination.

Signification implies that individuals use information from the institutional milieu to understand...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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