Study on the antecedents of information technology adoption in the Nigerian small and medium scale enterprises
This thesis determines the mediating effects of Organizational commitment and the moderating roles of Demographic variables on the relationship between Information Technology (IT) Characteristics and Adoption in the Nigerian SMEs. The objectives of the study are to assess how IT characteristics relate to “Adoption” directly and indirectly through Organizational commitment and also how the relationships between IT characteristics and adoption are moderated by Age, Gender and Experience. This research considers complexity, compatibility, usefulness and ease of use from Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) respectively. It takes Age, Gender and Experience from Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and, Commitment from Allen and Meyer Theory. For the purpose of, survey two-hundred and fifty (250) questionnaires were distributed and 183 valid ones were analyzed using SPSS software embedded with Hayes PROCESS command. The quantitative outcome from the SPSS/PROCESS command reveals that organizational commitment is a mediator of the relationship between complexity and adoption, as well as compatibility and adoption. However, there was no evidence to show that it mediates usefulness and ease of use. The research also found that age gender and experience only moderate compatibility and ease of use. Among the major contributions of this research are the extension of UTAUT2 to include DOI constructs and the use f a different sample to further the generalizability of UTAUT2 in a different context. The framework(s) proposed in this study could be used by business managers and government when taking some core-decisions relating to IT. This implies that the outcome could be used as a competitive tool to overcome stiff competitions by priotizing the appropriate areas that have the tendency of yielding fruitful outcome. Considering how the research instrumentation was conducted, likelihood of bias can not be cancelled out completely though, the researcher made efforts to ensure a random distribution of questionnaires.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations