Employee Technology Readiness and Adoption of Wireless

Technology and Services

Ai-Mei Chang
IRM College
National Defense University
Washington, DC 20319
chang@ndu.edu




P. K. Kannan
Smith School of Business
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
pkannan@rhsmith.umd.edu



Abstract

In this paper, we examine the relationship between
users technology readiness (specifically employees)
and their adoption of wireless technology and
services in a longitudinal setting. Technology
readiness measures and attitude towards wireless
adoption were measured across a sample of
government employees in July 2002. Subsequent to
this study, a significant portion of the employees were
asked to adopt wireless technology for work (e.g.,
Blackberry) by their government agencies. The same
group of employees was surveyed again after a 3 year
gap with regard to technology readiness and attitude
towards wireless adoption. The findings reveal that
among the group using wireless technology for work,
the measures of discomfort and insecurity are
much lower than before, indicating a positive impact
of technology use on user technology readiness and
comfort with technology. However, on the dimensions
of technology optimism and innovativeness,
there was no significant difference. The study also
reveals other findings quite relevant for wireless
technology adoption.
.
1. Introduction

In understanding users adoption of technology
either in the context of work or home, users
technology readiness plays an important role from the
perspective of a user [6]. In this paper, we focus on
the adoption of wireless technology and services by
employees of governmental agencies and their
propensity to embrace technology as measured by
their technology readiness index (TRI), and examine
how the measurement of TRI can help segment users
into groups and understand their propensity to adopt
wireless technology. Specifically, we study this
relationship in two parts first, we examine how TRI
and attitude towards wireless adoption are correlated.
Second, we examine how adoption of wireless
technology for work related purposes, impacts
employees TRI over time in a longitudinal study.
Both studies are exploratory. The studies provide
interesting findings regarding the impact of adoption
on subsequent attitudes and raises interesting
hypotheses that require a more formal study. In
addition, the insights derived have useful managerial
implications for usage of wireless technology in work
settings. We identify factors that affect technology
acceptance of employees and how organizations can
influence employees technology acceptance through
concrete measures, with a particular focus on wireless
technology acceptance. We first provide an overview
of TRI, and then describe the first study. We then
provide the specifics of the longitudinal study and
data and the findings from the subsequent study. We
discuss the implications of the findings and conclude
with the identification of future research work.

1.1. Technology Readiness and Acceptance

The construct of technology readiness has been
defined as peoples propensity to embrace and use
new technologies for accomplishing goals in home
life and at work ([6], p.308). The construct pertains
to an overall state of mind resulting from a gestalt of
mental enablers and inhibitors that collectively
determine a persons predisposition to use new
technologies ([6], p. 308). It is important to
emphasize that it is an overall state of mind and not a
measure of technology competency. Thus, it is a
combination of technology-related beliefs that
collectively determine a persons predisposition to
interact with technology-based products and
services([5], p.27). Many researchers ([4], for
example) have found that peoples views and attitudes
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towards technology is a mixture of positives, which
push them to adopt and use technology, and
negatives, which pull them away from technology. A
persons technology readiness, therefore, is
determined by the combination of these pushes and
pulls. Thus, a users technology readiness consists of
four dimensions two positive dimensions called
contributors and two negative dimensions called
inhibitors. The first of the contributors is
optimism a positive view of technology and a
belief that it offers people increased control,
flexibility, and efficiency in their lives. The second
contributor is innovativeness a tendency to be a
technology pioneer and thought leader. The two
inhibitors include discomfort a perceived lack of
control over technology and a feeling of being
overwhelmed by it, and insecurity a distrust of
technology and skepticism about its ability to work
properly ([6], p. 311). A users technology readiness
is a composite of all these four dimensions.
Employees technology readiness can be measured
using a multiple-item scale, which, in-turn, can be
used to construct an index called Technology
Readiness Index (TRI). In the next section we provide
a description of our first study, which illustrates how
employees TRI can be measured. (The full list of
items and the survey administration kit is available
from Rockbridge Associates, who holds the copyright
for TRI).

A key reason why technology readiness is one of
the important dimensions of our studies is due to the
linkage between Technology Readiness Index scores
and technology-related behaviors. Research by
Parasuraman [6] and Rockbridge Associates
(Parasuraman and Colby [5]) has shown that (1) TRI
is able to distinguish well between users and non-
users of high technology services, and (2) TRI is able
to distinguish between two groups the stronger one in
terms of more complex and more futuristic
technologies and (3) identify specific groups of users
for whom discomfort and insecurity is likely to be
very significant. TRI scores correlates well with
consumers ownership of technology-based products
and services (people who own technology-based
products and services have a significantly higher TRI
score) and with peoples use of technology-based
services (as compared to those who had no plans to
use the services, those who planned to use the
services in the next 12m months or have use the
services in the past 12 months, have significantly
higher TRI scores).

In extant research, employees acceptance of new
technology and intention to use the new technology
for work processes have been shown to be dependent
on three main factors: (1) their perceived usefulness
of the technology, (2) the perceived ease of use and
(3) the perceived availability of resources for
technology use [3], [4]. Perceived usefulness is
defined as the extent to which an employee believes
that using a particular technology will enhance her/his
job performance. Higher the perceived usefulness,
higher is the technology acceptance and technology
adoption. The implication is that as long as the use of
wireless technology is expected to result in explicit
increase in employee productivity or make their job
easy and increase their job effectiveness, its perceived
usefulness is high. Perceived ease of use is defined as
the degree to which a person believes the using a
technology will be free from effort. Perceived ease of
use is a catalyst to increasing the likelihood of user
acceptance. The advantage of wireless technology on
this dimension is that the technology plays an
important role in consumer/personal applications.
Thus, employees are likely to be familiar with the
technology and be at ease with it. Perceived
availability of resources include resources such as
time available for performing or learning to perform a
task, level of support available from other staff,
particularly IS staff, technology attributes such as
system availability, cost of access, documentation,
and perceive level of control over the technology.
Higher the perception of the availability of these
resources, higher will be technology acceptance. This
factor is particularly relevant if the wireless/mobile
application is complex.

There are other significant external factors that
also play a role in determining technology acceptance
by moderating the influence of the above three factors
on technology acceptance. The most important of
these factors is employee gender. It has been shown
by researchers [7] that men consider perceived
usefulness to a greater extent than women in making
their decision regarding the use of a new technology,
both in the short- and long-term. However, perceived
ease of use was more salient to women compared with
men after initial training with the technology and over
time with increasing use of that technology. Other
research (e.g., [1]) has established that individual-
level differences such as education, similar prior
experience, and beliefs about IT also have an impact
on the acceptance of technology. These individual
level differences are precisely what we see reflected
in the individual level TRI scores. These differences
also affect how employees learn using the technology
over time and have important implications for
developing training programs. This is particularly
relevant when mean TRI scores of employees are low
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and the management is embarking on programs to
increase the probability of acceptance of the new
wireless/mobile applications.

2. Study 1 - Technology Readiness and
Wireless Technology Adoption

In this section we explain the measurement of
Technology Readiness Index (TRI) with an
illustrative measurement of TRI of a group of
government employees using a survey that was
administered to these respondents. We also relate
employee technology readiness with their attitude
towards wireless adoptions, their perceptions on the
role that wireless can play in government applications
and their wireless usage.

The Technology Readiness scale consists of four
dimensions: (1) Optimism a positive view of
technology and a belief that it offers people increased
control, flexibility, and efficiency in their lives, (2)
Innnovativeness a tendency to be a technology
pioneer and thought leader, (3) Discomfort a
perceived lack of control over technology and a
feeling of being overwhelmed by it, and (4) Insecurity
distrust of technology and skepticism about its
ability to work properly ([6], p. 311). Each dimension
is measured using multiple-item scales. Some
examples of the multiple-item scale include: for
Optimism Products and services that use the
newest technologies are much more convenient to
use and Technology gives you more freedom of
mobility; for Innovativeness Other people come
to you for advice on new technologies and You
keep up with the latest technological developments in
your areas of interest; for Discomfort
Technology always seem to fail at the worst possible
time and Sometimes, you think that technology
systems are not designed for use by ordinary people;
and for Insecurity You do not consider it safe
giving out a credit card number over a computer and
You worry that information you send over the
Internet will be seen by other people. Each item is
responded to a 5-point scale ranging from strongly
agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). The Technology
Readiness Index is the composite score derived from
averaging the four dimensions (after reverse coding
the scores on discomfort and insecurity components).
Thus, higher TRI scores represent higher levels of
technology readiness. TRI as a measurement scale has
been shown to have high reliability, good content,
convergent and discriminant validity.



2.1 Attitude towards Wireless Adoption

In addition to the TRI items in the survey
instrument, we included several items that measured
(1) respondents perceptions of the role of
wireless/mobile technology in e-government setting,
(2) their attitude towards adopting wireless in
government in general, (3) their attitude towards
adopting wireless technology for their specific work,
(4) their usage of wireless technology for personal
work, and a number of other related issues. The
specific items used are listed in Table 1. All items
were measured on a five point scale ranging from (1)
strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree, with (3) being
neutral. The items were developed based on pilot
studies and the multi-item measures were factor
analyzed using confirmatory techniques to ensure
unidimensionality. The reliability of the multi-item
scales is also high (as indicated by the coefficient
alpha values ranging from 0.72 to 0.84). The survey
instrument also included information on whether the
respondent owned wireless devices such as cellular
phones, pagers, PDAs, wireless PDAs and wireless
access to Internet. Gender, age and education
information along with government agency affiliation
was also elicited.

2.2 Respondent Information

In all 204 government employees, half of who
were taking courses at the National Defense
University participated in the survey (administered in
July 2002). Three surveys had to be discarded as they
were only partially filled out. The government
agencies represented includes the US Army, the US
Navy, the US Air Force, Department of Defense,
Defense Intelligence Agency, DISA, IRS, State
Department, US Coast Guard, US Treasury
Department, US Customs Service, GSA, Department
of Interior, EPA, FAA, and a few other agencies.
Based on the responses to the demographic questions,
approximately 61% were male and 39% female.
About 44 percent of the respondents were between the
age of 45 and under 55, 46 percent between 35 and
under 45, and 10 percent under 35. In terms of their
highest education, 22 percent had post-graduate
degrees, 47 percent graduate degrees, 26 percent
undergraduate degrees and 5 percent had completed
high school.

In terms of the composition of the respondents,
our sample is biased towards the more educated and
more information technology oriented employees
(some of whom were attending IT-oriented classes at
the university). The sample was chosen deliberately in
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this fashion for two reasons: we were trying to relate
TRI with attitude towards wireless deployment. If
such relationship were significant in this population
(where TRI values are likely to be quite high and less


variant across the sample), then it is much more likely
to be replicated at a general population level, where
variances in TRI are much higher. Second, IT
employees are likely to the lead user segment of the
wireless technology and it was important to establish
the relationships at their level.

1. Role of Wireless
Technology
(ROLE)
(Coefficient Alpha =
0.82)
a. Wireless/mobile technology can play a very useful role in government
IT practices
b. You think wireless/mobile technology has a limited role to play in
government processes (reverse coded)
2. Attitude towards
Adoption (general)
(ATTADOPT)
(Coefficient Alpha =
0.79)
a. Adoption of mobile technology in government processes is a good
thing
b. Adopting wireless/mobile technology at work in government
organizations can create more problems than good (reverse coded)
3. Attitude towards
Adoption (work)
(ADOPTWK)
(Coefficient Alpha =
0.84)
a. You will actively use mobile/wireless technology for collaborative
work if provided the option
b. You will strongly support the adoption of wireless/mobile enterprise
applications in your work
c. Wireless/mobile technology can play a very useful role in your work
processes
4. Personal Usage of
Wireless
(PERUSAGE)
(Coefficient Alpha =
0.72)
a. You often use wireless/mobile technology for personal financial
activities such as stock trading or banking
b. You often use wireless/mobile technology for personal work
5. Personal Optimism
(PEROPTM)
Using wireless/mobile technology gives people more control over their
daily lives
6. Security in Personal
Context (PERSECU)
You do not consider it safe giving out a credit card number over a wireless
phone or other mobile devices
7. Comfort in Personal
Usage
(PERCOMFT)
You are not very comfortable using wireless/mobile technology for your
personal work
8. Security Enterprise
Context
(ENTRSECU)
Using wireless/mobile devices to access enterprise data has significant
security risks as compared to using wired devices
9. Wireless as a Substitute
for wired
(SUBSTITUT)
If wireless/mobile technologies were adopted in my organization it will
substitute wired technologies
10 Wireless Limited Role
(LMTDROL)
Wireless/mobile technology is appropriate for voice and e-mail but not for
other work processes
11 Wireless is Hyped
(HYPE)
The benefits of wireless/mobile technologies are often grossly overstated

Table 1: Items Related to Wireless/Mobile Technology

2.3 Survey Results and Implication

As seen in Table 1, the respondents as a group
have scored significantly high on the dimension of
technology optimism (mean = 4.02) and high on
innovativeness dimension too (mean = 3.77). It is
also interesting to note that while the mean value for
discomfort dimension is around the neutral range,
the mean value for insecurity is higher than that
(mean = 3.27). Overall, the mean for TRI is 3.36, with
the minimum TRI value being 2.3 and the maximum
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4.2. The mean TRI is much higher for this group as
compared to the general consumers owning
technology-based products and services (as analyzed
by [6]) where the means ranged from 2.90 to 3.12. It
is also comparable to the TRI scores obtained by
consumers using technology-based services such as
purchasing e-tickets and purchasing items online.
This indicates that, as a group, the respondents have
high technology readiness, while there are some
individuals with low TRI values (2.3), with the range
of TRI values being 1.9.




Scale

Optimism Innovativeness Discomfort Insecurity TRI
Mean 4.02 3.77 3.08 3.27 3.36
Std. Dev 0.46 0.70 0.51 0.69 0.40
Minimum 3.0 1.7 2.0 1.9 2.3
Maximum 4.9 5.0 4.4 4.9 4.2
Range 1.9 3.3 2.4 3.0 1.9
Sample Size 199 199 199 199 199
Table 2: Scores on TRI and its Component Dimensions

Tables 2 and 3 provide the mean scores of the
respondents on their various attitudes towards
wireless adoption and perceptions of wireless
technology. As a group, these government employees
with high TRI scores feel very positively about the
role of wireless technology in government processes
(mean on ROLE = 3.75). They view that the adoption
of wireless technology in government processes is a
good thing and can do more good than bad in
government applications (mean on ATTADOPT =
3.54). Also, this attitude is not just confined to
generalities; this group also feels positively about
adopting wireless technology to their own work
processes (mean on ADOPTWK = 3.51).

In terms of their wireless usage for personal work
and personal activities, while they are quite optimistic
about wireless technology providing them more
control over their daily lives (mean on PEROPTM =
3.64) and somewhat comfortable about using wireless
technology for personal work (mean on PEROPTM =
3.22), they do not use wireless technology often to do
their personal work or financial activities (mean on
PERUSAGE = 2.49). This implies that although they
have mobile devices such mobile phone, it might be
more for social activities (chatting) than for personal
work. This might also be a reflection of their attitude
towards security of using wireless/mobile device

The respondents a group tended to disagree to the
statement that they do not consider it safe giving out a
credit card number on a wireless or mobile device
(mean on PERSECU = 2.60), but they tended to
disagree more when stated that using wireless/mobile
devices to access enterprise had significant security
risks as compared to using wired devices (mean on
ENTRSECU = 1.97). This might indicate that security
concerns become more pronounced when personal
work is involved than when enterprise work is
involved, although the absolute scores reveal that this
group has quite a positive perception of wireless
security overall.

The group also did not think wireless is a
substitute for wired technology (mean on
SUBSTITUT = 2.23), and did not feel that wireless
use is limited just to voice and e-mail (mean on
LMTDROL = 2.33). However, they did somewhat
agree that the benefits of wireless/mobile technologies
are often overstated (mean on HYPE = 3.40). In terms
of their ownership of mobile/wireless devices, the
respondent group could be termed as early adopters of
technology 87 percent owned a mobile phone, 37
percent a PDA and 20 percent PDAs with wireless
capabilities, 29 percent owned pagers and 13 percent
had wireless access to the Internet. This correlates
well with the high TRI scores that the group has
obtained.

While we have seen that as a group the
respondents have high TRI scores and have positive
attitudes and perceptions regarding wireless
technology and their adoption in work processes. A
better test would be to correlate these scores at the
individual level. Table 5 provides the correlation
between individual TRI scores and the individual
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attitude scores and perception scores on the various
dimensions. As seen from the table, the correlations
are quite positive (ranging from 0.32 to 0.47 for the
attitude towards adoption scores). The other
correlations are also in the expected directions.
Interestingly, the number of wireless devices that
respondents own is also correlated positively with
their TRI scores. This is an indication that TRI scores
can predict individual attitudes and perceptions
towards wireless technology and adoption, and it
could play a major role in determining users
acceptability of technology, which is a key factor in
successful adoption of wireless initiatives.

Scale/
Variable
ROLE ATTADOPT ADOPTWK PERUSAGE PEROPTM
Mean 3.75 3.54 3.51 2.49 3.64
Std. Dev 0.96 1.02 1.04 1.21 1.11
Minimum 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Maximum 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0
Range 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0
Sample Size 199 199 198 201 200
Table 3: Scores on Role, Attitude to Adopting Wireless and Usage

Table 4: Scores on Security, Comfort, Substitute Perceptions

Scale/Variables

TRI Correlation
ROLE Wireless Role in Govt 0.42
ATTADOPT Attitude towards Adopting (general) 0.46
ADOPTWK Atttitude towards Adopting at work 0.47
PERUSAGE Personal Usage 0.46
PEROPTM Personal Optimism 0.34
PERSECU Security Perception Personal 0.44
ENTRSECU Security Perception Enterprise 0.32
PERCOMFT Comfort in Personal Usage 0.35
SUBSTITUT Wireless as Substitute for Wired -0.03
LMTDROL Wireless has Limited Role -0.16
HYPE Wireless Benefits Hyped -0.41
Number of Distinct Wireless/Mobile Devices Owned 0.37

Table 5: Correlation Between TRI and Wireless Attitudes and Perceptions

Variable

PER-
SUCU
ENTR-
SECU
PER-
COMFT
SUBS-
TITUT
LMTD-
ROL
HYPE
Mean 2.60 1.97 3.22 2.23 2.33 3.40
Std. Dev 1.40 1.01 1.32 0.97 1.13 0.96
Minimum 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Maximum 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0
Range 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0
Sample Size 199 201 201 200 200 200
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In the context of adopting wireless technology,
measuring employees technology readiness is useful
for two important reasons. First, the individual scores
of employees can be used for screening those
employees for specific technology assignments,
training programs, and education. Second, the
individual scores on the specific dimensions of
optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity
can be used to segment employees into segments
based on their scores [5] so that training and
education programs can be tailored for the different
segments with a view to ease the process of wireless
technology adoption. The TRI score is not an end in
itself, but it is useful as a starting point for influencing
employees technology acceptance so that wireless
technology adoption is smooth and efficient. In
attaining this objective, TRI
scores provide the current state of technology
readiness of employees and suggest means to improve
their technology acceptance in the case that their TRI
scores are low.

3. Study 2 Longitudinal Study of TRI
and Adoption

The focus of study 2 is to explore the impact of
the adoption/usage of wireless technology and
wireless services for work related purposes on
employees technology readiness. During early 2003,
many of the agencies from whom we had surveyed
employees for our first study, started providing free
Blackberry equipment and services to their employees
for checking e-mail as well as for using wireless
phone. While the adoption and use was strongly
encouraged by these agencies, it was not mandated or
forced on the employees. We decided to contact our
original respondents and re-do the technology
readiness and attitude towards wireless adoption
questionnaire with the same set of respondents some
of whom could have adopted Blackberry for work
related use. Some of the respondents we could not get
in touch with, but we were able to contact 170 of the
original respondents and re-do the survey with them
during June 2005. Of this, 102 had adopted and used
Blackberry for work related activities for at least one
year and 51 had not adopted wireless for work related
activities. The rest had been using it for less than one
year, so we did not consider them in our analysis. Our
focus in this study is to compare these two groups
those employees who have adopted and used wireless
technology and services for work related activities
and those who had not adopted the technology for
work on the many dimensions of technology
readiness and attitude towards wireless adoption in
terms of the changes from their original scores.

One of the important issues that needed to be
studied before we could make any comparisons was
the issue of self-selection. It could be argued that
since the agencies had not mandated the adoption and
use of wireless technology by their employees but
only strongly encouraged them to adopt, those who
choose to adopt the technology could be in someway
different from those who decided not to adopt. In
order to examine this bias, we compared the two
groups (we will term them as BB ADOPT and NO
ADOPT) on their many dimensions of the TRI
scores measured in the July 2003 study. The results
are provided in Table 6 below.


Scores on TRI Dimensions
(standard deviations)
Group
Optimism Innovativeness Discomfort Insecurity TRI
BB Adopt
(n = 102)
3.98
(0.67)
3.83
(0.54)
3.12
(0.40)
3.29
(0.57)
3.35
(0.34)
No Adopt
(n = 51)
4.09
(0.89)
3.76
(0.64)
3.11
(0.58)
3.26
(0.79)
3.37
(0.46)

Table 6: Comparison of TRI scores for Adopt and No Adopt Groups (July 2002 scores)


As seen in Table 6, there is no significant difference
between the two groups on all the dimensions of TRI
and the overall TRI, thus indicating that self-selection
bias is not a problem with the sample we are
comparing. Based on the survey of TRI and attitude
towards adoption administered for the two groups in

June 2005, we have compared below for each group
their July 2002 and June 2005 scores on all
dimensions of TRI. The significance tests are t-tests
on the basis of matched samples.


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Scores on TRI Dimensions Group
=
BB Adopt
Optimism Innovativeness Discomfort Insecurity TRI
July 2002 3.98

3.83

3.12

3.29

3.35

June 2005 4.02
(No Sig.
Difference)
3.87
(No Sig.
Difference)
2.97
(Sig.
Different)
3.09
(Sig.
Different)
3.46
(Sig.
Different)

Table 7: Before and After TRI Comparison for BB Adopt Group


Scores on TRI Dimensions Group
=
Adopt
Optimism Innovativeness Discomfort Insecurity TRI
July 2002 4.09

3.76

3.11

3.26

3.37

June 2005 4.11
(No Sig.
Difference)
3.87
(Sig.
Different)
3.16
(No Sig.
Difference)
3.21
(No Sig.
Difference)
3.40
(No Sig.
Different)

Table 8: July 2002 and June 2005 TRI Comparison for No Adopt Group

Tables 7 indicates that the TRI scores after
wireless adoption (June 2005) are significantly higher
than scores before adoption (July 2002), with the
significance arising from specifically two dimensions
Discomfort and Insecurity, which are both lower in
the June 2005 scores. Table 8 shows that two scores
for the No Adopt group were pretty much the same
the overall TRI scores are not significantly different,
while only the Innovativeness dimension shows some
significant increase.


BB ADOPT

NO ADOPT
Attitude
Dimensions July
2002
June
2005
July
2002
June
2005
ROLE 3.77 4.01* 3.69 3.86*
ATTADOPT 3.53 3.56 3.54 3.48
ADOPTWK 3.49 3.63* 3.48 3.72*
PERUSAGE 2.51 2.78* 2.49 2.58
PEROPTM 3.63 3.69 3.65 3.66
PERSECU 2.64 2.81* 2.74 2.67
ENTRSECU 2.01 2.00 1.88 1.94
PERCOMFT 3.20 3.47* 3.26 3.30
HYPE 3.36 3.40 3.42 3.45
* indicates significant difference at 0.05 level

Table 9: July 2002 and June 2005 Attitude Scales
Comparison


Comparison on the attitude dimensions (Table 9)
reveals that for both groups the scores on ROLE
(wireless role) and ADOPTWK (attitude towards
adopting at work) show significantly higher scores in
the June 2005 survey. However, for the group that
adopted wireless technology and services at work
(Blackberry), the scores on usage of wireless for
personal work (PERUSAGE) and perception of
wireless security for personal transactions (PERSCU)
and comfort in personal use (PERCOMFT) show a
significantly higher score in the June 2005 survey.

The findings, although exploratory at this stage,
clearly indicate that the group which uses wireless
technology show an increase in their technology
readiness scores overall. Specifically, they have
decreased discomfort with the technology and lower
perceptions of insecurity as compared to the before-
wireless-adoption-for-work scores. The scores on the
other attitude dimensions also show that those who
adopt wireless at work have higher scores on personal
usage of wireless, perception of wireless security for
personal transactions and comfort in personal use
after the adoption. For the group that did not adopt
wireless technology, the TRI scores do no change
significantly. However, for both groups, the role of
wireless in their work and attitude towards adoption
of such technology show increased scores. The results
indicate that while employees as a group are more
Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2006
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appreciative of the role that wireless technology and
services can play in work related activities, the
increased scores on personal use dimension are
exclusive to the group that adopts the technology.

4. Conclusions

The implications of the studies are many. From
the point of view of employers, one of the advantages
of using TRI scores is that an organization can
identify employees most receptive to wireless/mobile
technology and use them as the lead-user group in
providing support for their peers. Thus, lead-users can
be selected for training programs first, and
subsequently play a critical role in helping/supporting
their peers through similar education/training
programs. Our results imply that pilot programs are
an excellent way to introduce the wireless technology
and its benefits to the employees. Such programs, in
addition to resulting in employee buy-in, may also
identify and reduce the potential inhibitors
(discomfort and insecurity) to successful applications
and thus the negatives can be minimized before a full-
scale launch. One advantage of wireless technology
is that it also has significant personal applications. We
have seen that scores on personal use dimensions
increase as a result of wireless adoption. In order to
increase employees comfort level with the
technology and increase its perceived ease of use,
employees can be encouraged to use wireless
technology for their personal and work use.
Employers can provide subsidies or incentives for
buying wireless phones and other devices. From the
point of view of wireless technology and service
providers, the results imply that focusing on business
use of the technology can bring in significant
dividends in terms of increased acceptance of the
technology by users. Thus, service providers can
create packages for employers as well as for
employees personal use, which might be a better way
to target consumers and lower their inhibitions. From
a research viewpoint, the studies form a good starting
point to examine customers adoption behavior and
the impact of adoption on subsequent attitudes
towards the technology. Future research can examine
these issues in a more controlled setting.

5. References

[1] Agarwal, R. and Prasad, J. Are Individual Differences
Germane to the Acceptance of New Information
Technologies, Decision Sciences, Vol. 30, No. 2, Spring
1999, 361-391.

[2] Chang, A and Kannan, P. K., Preparing for Wireless
and Mobile Technologies in Government, IBM Center for
Business of Government Report, Washinton D.C,
November 2002.

[3] Davis, F. D., Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of
Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology,
MIS Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1989, pp. 318-339.

[4] Mathieson, K., Peacock, E., and Chin, W. Extending
the Technology Acceptance Model: The Influence of
Perceived User Resources, The Database for Advances in
Information Systems, Vol. 32, No. 3, Summer 2001, pp. 86-
112.

[5] Parasuraman, A and Colby, C. L., Techno-Ready
Marketing: How and Why Your Customers Adopt
Technology, The Free Press, New York, NY 10020, 2001.

[6] Parasuraman, A., Technology Readiness Index (TRI):
A Multiple-Item Scale to Measure Readiness to Embrace
New Technologies, Journal of Service Research, Volume
2, No. 4, May 2000, 307-320.

[7] Venkatesh, V. and Morris, M.G., Why Dont Men Ever
Stop to Ask for Directions? Gender, Social Influence, and
Their Role in Technology Acceptance and Usage
Behavior, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 115-139,
March 2000.

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