The Influence of Situational Involvement on Employees’ Intrinsic Involvement During IS Development

Abstract

The accelerated pace of digital technology development and adoption and the ensuing digital disruption challenge established business models at many levels, particularly by invalidating traditional value proposition logics. Therefore, processes of technology and information system (IS) adoption and implementation are crucial to organizations striving to survive in complex digitalized environments. In these circumstances, organizations should be aware of and minimize the possibilities of not using IS. The user involvement perspective may help organizations face this issue. Involving users in IS implementation through activities, agreements, and behavior during system development activities (what the literature refers to as situational involvement) may be an effective way to increase user psychological identification with the system, achieving what the literature describes as intrinsic involvement, a state that ultimately helps to increase the adoption rate. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to understand the influence of situational involvement on intrinsic involvement. Thus, the paper explores how situational involvement and intrinsic involvement relate through a fractional factorial experiment with engineering undergraduate students. The resulting model explains 57.79% of intrinsic involvement and supports the importance of the theoretical premise that including users in activities that nurture a sense of responsibility contributes toward system implementation success. To practitioners, the authors suggest that convenient and low-cost hands-on activities may contribute significantly to IS implementation success in organizations. The study also contributes to adoption and diffusion theory by exploring the concept of user involvement, usually recognized as necessary for an IS adoption but not entirely contemplated in the key adoption and diffusion models.