Cultural Model of Information Technology Usage (CMITU)

Abstract

Abstract

Since usage is a necessary condition for deriving benefit from information technology and the use by the end users is not guaranteed, one of the main streams of research in the field is the explanation of acceptance and use. Increasingly, it appears that researchers are shifting focus from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The main contribution of the UTAUT to the TAM was the addition of demographic variables (such as age, gender, and experience with IT) and situational variable (voluntariness) as the main moderators of beliefs on technology usage. This paper extends this line of research beyond these moderator variables. Given recent trends in the globalization of business and the prominence of multinational team members, managers in multinational companies are now confronted with the need for increasing usage of information technology from a workforce comprised of different cultures.  Furthermore, without understanding the role of cultural values in IT usage, it could be hard for developers to design and guide systems development in ways that are appropriate in different cultures. Since individuals are conditioned by their culture and the suggestion form prior research that UTAUT model do not universally hold across cultures, this paper extends the UTAUT model by espousing national cultural values as an important set of individual difference moderators. These espoused national cultural values of masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are incorporated into an extended model of UTAUT as moderators. At this stage, the model was constructed and will be explained in this paper. The future work is the validation of the model in which a cross-sectional survey will be conducted in two countries varying in term of culture according to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions’ indexes. The findings may provide a useful lens for the successful implement of information technology in multinational and transnational organizations.

Keywords: Information Technology, user’s acceptance, use of information technology, national culture, cultural change.