Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Otondo, Robert F.

Committee Member

Trinkle, Brad S.

Committee Member

Vardaman, James M.

Committee Member

Marett, Kent

Committee Member

Ponder, Nicole

Date of Degree

8-11-2017

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Business Information Systems

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Business

Department

Department of Management and Information Systems

Abstract

Extant information systems literature has viewed systems acceptance and adoption from a technocentric viewpoint that emphasizes post-implementation intentions and attitudes - mainly usefulness and ease of use. Further, the effects of organizational hierarchy and work-environment factors have not been adequately factored largely because the single level user-level perspective has dominated. This dissertation addresses this gap by incorporating work environment factors while focusing on users’ preliminary, pre-implementation attitudes, perceptions, and intentions. It thus employs a multilevel perspective that allows for deeper insights into the interplay between workgroup- and individual-level phenomena. The objectives herein are, first, to illuminate change readiness as a plausible lens through which system acceptance and adoption can be viewed. Although change readiness is predominantly studied in organizational behavior, it has not yet been applied in information systems research. Consequently, it presents a promising approach to explore users’ responses to new systems. Secondly, this dissertation aims to empirically explore the multilevel nature of the change readiness constructs as envisaged in the framework of the antecedents and outcomes of change readiness. The research model is adapted from the multilevel framework of the antecedents and outcomes of change readiness as propounded by Rafferty et al. (2013). Appropriate hypotheses are developed and a survey instrument established to test those hypotheses. To ensure validity, preliminary investigations are conducted after an expert panel review. Subsequently, data was collected and analyzed to assess the extent to which the proposed model and hypotheses are empirically supported. Results and findings from this dissertation have theoretical and practical implications. Extant literature notes the dearth of research that theorizes outcomes of change readiness in the organizational behavior domain. This dissertation theorizes intention to adopt as an outcome of change readiness. Practice benefits from the context-based empirical results which (1) examine whether change readiness has any significant impact on system adoption and (2) the effect of workgroup change readiness on individual’s intention to adopt the system.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19817

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