An investigation in to factors hindering adoption of new technology by employees in the workplace

Abstract

The study tests resistance to technological change at a workplace where resistance is conceptualised as three-dimensional (negative) construct towards a large scale organisational change. The sample consisted of at least 160 employees across the entire organization structure of Silicon Technology plant with a total staff population of 300 employees. The 165 participants issued with the survey produced a 4.8% non response rate with only two feedback scripts that could not be used because they were incompletely filled. The usable 155 feedbacks consisted of 63% men and 37% women with a mean age of 31 years. This sample comprised of 36% managers, 20% specialists, 43% general workers and 1% students. The factors influencing individuals' resistance to technological change were selectively chosen based on previous literature. Therefore not all antecedents of individual resistance to technological change are examined in this study. The study considered both personality and context as antecedents to resistance. Among the context independent variables, a further distinction was made between the anticipated change outcomes and the change process. Finally the study examined the relationships between each resistance component and some work related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, intention to quit and continuance commitment. The findings acknowledge that resistance can manifest itself in different forms and these different resistance fom,s can be indicative of the presence of different types of antecedents and as such different interventions could be required to alleviate different forms of resistance. Trust in management is the only studied factor that proved more likely to provoke the full spectrum of resistance fonTls while other factors would more likely arouse specifically only one or two forms.