Beyond Acceptance and Resistance: A Socio-Technical Approach to the Exploration of Intergroup Differences in ICT Use and Non-use at Work

Through a socio-technical approach and based on abductive case study analysis, this work explores the antecedents of differences in ICT use between two different employee groups in the same organizations. Prior to the large-scale implementation of a complex ERP system, one of the groups consisted of experienced ICT users, while the other consisted of inexperienced users. The significance of the nature of the interplay between task-technology fit, the leadership and the ICT-organization integration processes, and employees' levels of self-determination, is investigated in relation to different user practices, and in particular, how it may institutionalize involuntary non-use for the group of inexperienced employees. Previous experience is a moderating variable, together with participation and interaction possibilities in everyday work. In a perspective of sociomateriality where user practices are seen as developing through situated everyday actions and interactions, the relationship between demands, control and support and inherent need satisfaction is elaborated. This study shows that employees' use or non-use of new ICT has to do with how leadership behaviors affect the ICT-organization integration process and its outcomes, and how this process may serve the experienced employee group over the inexperienced, and as such contribute to involuntary non-use of new ICT for the latter.