Causal paths to acceptance of technological innovations by individual employees

Despite much research on organizations’ adoption of innovation, little is currently known about individual employees have gone about it. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the determinants that address individual employees’ decisions concerning innovation in the workplace.

Data were collected from 272 employees from a tertiary education institution in Australia using a structured instrument.

Results from the structural equation modeling analysis indicate that enjoyment and motivation impact significantly on attitudes to an innovation, which, in turn, affects how employees behave toward it.

Furthermore, organizational patronage, innovativeness and self-image have been found to influence the innovation adoption process. These findings have implications for the effective management and implementation of an innovation at the individual level.

Although innovation adoption has been studied extensively, drivers of adoption and research on individual innovation acceptance remain limited. Designing an effective approach for increasing end-user acceptance and subsequent use of innovation continues to be a fundamental challenge. The current literature indicates that we know relatively little about the ways in which individuals adopt and the factors that influence individual adoption of innovation. This study is designed to fill that gap. The identification of the factors is important to create a work environment that is conducive to individual adoption of innovation and thereby gain the expected benefits from the innovation.