Welcome back. In this lesson, we set ourselves three goals, understand user resistance, different models of user adoption and different leavers for affecting user adoption. This video will focus on different leavers for affecting user adoption. So, the different leavers we will focus on in this video are user involvement, training, peer support, top management support and use of external consultants. So, let's start with user involvement. The role of user involvement and participation. So, the main idea is that if users are involved in the development of the information system, they take ownership of the system, they believe that they were involved in the development of the system, it is their system. In that case, they are more likely to adopt the system. So, user participation affects attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as satisfaction, use intention and system use. Also, if users are involved in the development of the system, the system that gets developed is closer to what the users want. So, you develop a higher quality system, system that actually meets the user's requirements. So, user participation affects productivity outcomes such as time and budget goals and project quality such as functionality that meets user requirements. So, if users are involved in the development of the system, the system that is developed includes features that users want and does not include features that users have no intention of using. So, in that sense, user involvement leads to system that is developed on time and budget and functionality that users actually want to use. Academic research has found that user participation has stronger impact on attitudinal and behavioral outcomes than productivity outcomes. That is, user involvement is more likely to be associated with the users actually using the system than being associated with productivity outcomes like on time and on budget. The next leaver we will focus on is training. Training helps with application knowledge covering commands and tools in the application. Training also includes business knowledge about how the application enables the performance of different business tasks, that is how the application allows the task to be performed differently. Training also helps with collaboration. That is, users understand how they use the system affects others and how others use the system affects how they do their work. Typically, experts explain the application to novices in a classroom setting demonstrating how to use the system, observing the learners practicing using the system and they provide feedback to the users. The relationship between training and information systems implementation varies with technical complexity and task interdependence. Under conditions of high technical complexity, training becomes more important. Technical complexity affects both application and business knowledge that users need to use the application. Thus, as technical complexity increases, training becomes more important. For example, for low complexity innovations, users face limited knowledge barriers. That is, for low complexity innovations, users don't actually need formal training to use the system, they can use the system on their own. That is, training is more important for technologically complex systems. Training is also more important when the system helps with interdependent tasks. So, when users need to understand how their work affects the work of others and how the work of others affects their work, then training becomes more important. So training is more important when the system helps with tasks that are interdependent. Next, we're going to look at peer support. An individual's coworkers can be an important source of help in overcoming knowledge barriers. It is easier to transfer knowledge between people with similar training background and job characteristics. So, academic research has found that peer support is very important in helping with adoption of new information systems. People learn through self-discovery and through peer. So, that is having coworkers who are knowledgeable about the information system is very helpful in influencing an employee to use the system. So, if an employee's coworkers use the system, then the employee is more likely to use the system because it is easier for an employee to learn from a coworker than to learn from training. So, this peer support can include any user outside of formal training. So, peer support can include lead users, resident experts and formal consultants, any coworker from which an employee can learn about the system. Peers can be more helpful than helpdesk, as helpdesk may be understaffed and helpdesk may lack the domain knowledge to resolve user problems. So, academic research has found that peer support is a very important leaver in influencing the adoption of new systems. Next, we will look at top management support and commitment. Top management support and commitment is essential in information systems implementation as information system implementation is very very resource intensive. So, top management is responsible for allocating scarce material and managerial resources. Top management support also legitimizes new information systems and convinces users to expand effort to learn to use the new systems. So, this top management support and commitment is communicated through active championship and through organizational communication. Academic research has also found that top management support is more important if task interdependence is higher. If the value from the system depends on lots of users performing interdependent tasks using the system, then top management support is more important. Finally, we look at external consultants who may influence the adoption of new system. So here, I would like to go back and refer to the study I discussed earlier where Robbie et al looked at the implementation of enterprise systems. In the implementation of enterprise systems, forms have to overcome knowledge barriers associated with configuration of the ERP package. Here, carefully managed consulting teams addressed configuration knowledge barriers. So, consultants or external vendors who may provide clients with capabilities that the client lags is a very important leaver in influencing the implementation of information systems. Thank you.
