Who Influences Whom? Analyzing Workplace Referents’ Social Influence on it Adoption and Non-Adoption

Abstract

Technology adoption research has long struggled to incorporate normative beliefs from sources in the social environment of adopters into adoption models. We study the role of social influence from different workplace referent groups, like superiors and colleagues from the same or the IT department, on the intention to adopt. An empirical analysis, using data from 152 firms, based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and related approaches reveals that social influence on adoption significantly differs with regard to both source (peer groups) and sink (adopters and non-adopters) of the influence. The results imply that a single cumulative subjective norm measure might be too naive and that future research might considerably improve our understanding of IT adoption and non-adoption by revealing the differential impact of various peer groups on adoption intention, and also on its antecedents.