Integrating the perceptions that cause Resistance to IT: Expanding the nomological network of the IT identity Threat

ABSTRACT

While there is a considerable body of research on resistance to technology, there are few works that consider the phenomenon from the user’s point of view, and few that consider task-related as well as social factors in concert. This work places the IT Identity Threat at the center of a mediation model to explain how task-related and social, as well as personal, factors work in concert to cause Resistance to IT. Prior literature and qualitative data were used to explore and describe the IT Identity Threat’s antecedents, which were refined and then tested in two separate cases. Data from two separate studies expand the nomological network surrounding the IT Identity Threat and demonstrate that Resistance to IT may best be understood as the result of how individuals feel about themselves as users of a technology.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Notes

¹ A strictly positivist approach to research assumes an objective and quantitatively measurable reality. Positivist social science research is generally carried out by means of statistical evaluation of numeric data, collected through instruments such as the survey. One criticism of this paradigm is that it may exclude important evidence that can be collected through qualitative methods (Creswell & Creswell, 2005).

² The term, “nomological network” refers to a collection of constructs that are statistically related (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). Over time, the elaboration and testing of the nomological network that contains a construct improves that construct’s validity and generalizability (Saad, 2020).

³ This university was recently ranked in the top 20 Public Universities in the well-known US News and World Rankings of Best Colleges.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Craig

Kevin Craig is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business. Before earning his PhD in Information Systems, he worked as a software developer and project manager for over ten years. His research examines the effects of identity and workplace stereotypes on individual behavior regarding technology. Kevin’s is an Associate Editor at European Journal of Information systems and his work appears in Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Business Economics, and Communications of the Association for Information Systems.

Varun Grover

Varun Grover is the George and Boyce Billingsley Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of IS at the Walton School of Business, University of Arkansas. He has published extensively in the information systems field, with over 300 publications in major refereed journals; ten recent articles ranking him among the top four researchers globally. Dr. Grover has an h-index of 96, which is ranked in the top five in the field. He is an AIS Fellow and has received the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement from the AIS.

Jason B. Thatcher

Jason B. Thatcher holds the Milton F. Stauffer Professorship in the Department of Management Information Systems at the Fox School of Business of Temple University. Dr. Thatcher's research examines the influence of individual beliefs and characteristics on technology use, cybersecurity, and strategic issues tied to information technology use in organizations. His work appears in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of the Association of Information Systems. He has served as Senior Editor at MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of the Association for Information Systems.