...services sector, where nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations provide social human services to "improve the conditions of disadvantaged people in society" (WordNet 2.0, 2005). Such organizations drive their operations and services on an overwhelming commitment to serve vulnerable populations, to protect their clients' integrity and privacy, and to improve the scarce resources within which current services are provided (Gutierrez & Friedman, 2005). In this way, organizations in the social services sector differ from other nonprofits, such as museums, private universities, and environmental organizations.

Today the social services sector substantially contributes to the U.S. economy. In 1998, nearly 400,000 nonprofits that provided social and legal services generated $74.45 billion in revenue and employed 1.9 million people (Austin, 2002). The gross output of social assistance reached $112.1 billion in 2003, with an annual increase of more than 9 percent since 1998, which was more than double the 4.4 percent annual increase rate of the overall gross domestic product during the same period (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2006). Employment in the social services is expected to outgrow the average increase in all occupations through 2012 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2005).

Compared with the business sector, social work presents a unique context that features highly limited resources coupled with the mandatory acceptance of organizational IT. Although all nonprofits need to adopt a more managerial approach and assume more operational accountability (Speckbacher, 2003), nonprofit social services organizations operate under even greater pressure given that they generate most of their revenue through external funds, half of which come from government agencies (Austin, 2002). It is not uncommon for social services sector organizations to be required to adopt certain IT to meet external requirements of program performance evaluation. Consequently, staff members at such organizations often view IT deployment and usage as a burden that interferes with their core missions. IT expenses, including user training and support, are seen as diverting precious resources from those in need to satisfy bureaucratic requirements (Benedetto & Pirie, 1989; Dukler, 1989). Moreover, the cultural and legal dynamics of data privacy make the electronic manipulation of client data highly sensitive. These organizational-level concerns inevitably cause individuals to treat IT differently than users in the business sector. For example, researchers have found that funding agencies' current emphasis on administrative efficiency, coupled with concerns about the use of data, has resulted in negative user attitudes toward IT (Berlinger & Te'eni, 1999).

This study addresses IT acceptance in the social services sector by taking advantage of the knowledge accumulated from IT acceptance research in other organizational contexts. We based our research on the decomposed theory of planned behavior, a theoretical framework that enabled us to identify a set of factors that contribute to IT acceptance by users in the social services sector so that effective interventions can be designed to promote acceptance.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Decades of research in IT acceptance have identified the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) as one of the leading theories in explaining how users respond to newly introduced IT (for example, Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989; Taylor & Todd, 1995;Venkatesh et al., 2003). It holds that actual technology usage is determined by users' intentions to use the technology. Three factors contribute to such intentions: (1) attitudes toward IT usage, (2) subjective norms, and (3) perceived behavioral control. Attitudes toward IT usage reflect users' calculations of the possible gains or losses caused by using the technology. Subjective norms are the effects from influential people on the users regarding their technology use. Perceived behavioral control describes the extent to which users feel they are actually able to use the technology. Each of these three factors is affected by a set of beliefs concerning technology use (namely, behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs). In addition, perceived behavioral control also directly affects actual IT usage (see Figure 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The canonical way of applying the theory entails eliciting salient beliefs and their weights (Ajzen, 1991), which could take much effort. An alternative to this method is the decomposed theory of planned behavior (Taylor &Todd, 1995), which breaks down beliefs into multidimensional belief structures based on theories or previous empirical findings. Using this method provides multiple advantages (Davis et al., 1989; Taylor &Todd). Theoretically, decomposed belief structures clarifies the relationships between beliefs and antecedents of users' intentions to use IT. Methodologically, measures of the decomposed belief structures can be reused and hence confirmed or disproved across studies. In terms of practical value, the salient beliefs elicited may vary across studies, but the decomposed theory of planned behavior offers a set of specific beliefs that can affect users' intentions and actual acceptance. Hence the decomposed theory provides more insights than the original theory into how management can influence the acceptance process.

BEHAVIORAL BELIEFS

The theory of planned behavior views behavioral beliefs as considerations regarding the outcomes generated from engaging in certain behaviors or the cost incurred from these behaviors. Such beliefs provide the basis on which people form attitudes toward performing the behaviors. Previous studies consistently have suggested that perceived usefulness is the most important belief that contributes to individuals' attitudes toward IT usage (for example, Davis et al., 1989; Mathieson, 1991;Venkatesh et al., 2003). Davis defined perceived usefulness as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance" (p. 320). This definition clearly...

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



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