Organisational Change and Acceptance

This chapter reports on the development of the technology acceptance model from 1986 when Davis investigated technology acceptance from an individual’s view as to the ease of use and perceived usefulness of a system. Since then, many variations have been presented in attempts to explain how and what influences a computer system user’s uptake of new technology within an organisation. Whilst all variations were developed explicitly to predict users’ acceptance or rejection of new technology, these variations are in essence predictors of acceptance or rejection of change. Factors such as the organisational change environment and informal communication (rumours), together with social influence as exercised by colleagues should be considered major contributors to the perceptions of new technology and therefore acceptance. This chapter extends the original model to include the variations and proposes that rather than look at technology acceptance in isolation, acceptance of new technology should be viewed as acceptance of change. The author proposes the model Social Influence and Change Acceptance (SICAM) to reflect the inclusion of TAM’s variations in an organizational change context.