User Motivation to Explore Enterprise System Features: An Exploratory Study of Its Organizational Antecedents and Consequences

To attain the strategic goal of deriving competitive advantage from Enterprise System (ES) adoption, organizations rely on users’ exploration of the system features and eventually integrating the system application tightly with job tasks. Research on how to align users’ interest with the organization’s strategic goal and enhance user motivation to explore ES features is of great significance but lacking. Drawing upon organizational psychology and information systems theories, this paper investigates the organizational mechanisms (i.e., reward system, autonomy job design, and socialization tactics) enhancing user motivation (i.e., extrinsic, intrinsic and normative motivation) to explore ES features, the moderating effect of individual motivational system (prevention focus in particular) on the association between organizational mechanisms and motivation, and how different types of motivation affect cognitive and affective exploration outcomes. Our research model is tested by data collected from individual users through a longitudinal two-wave survey. Theoretical contributions and managerial implication of this study are discussed. Résumé En se basant sur les théories de la psychologie organisationnelle et des systèmes d’informations, ce papier enquête sur les déterminants et les conséquences de la motivation des utilisateurs pour explorer les caractéristiques d’un système d’entreprise. Notre modèle de recherche est confronté aux données collectées auprès d’utilisateurs individuels dans le cadre d’une étude longitudinale. Les contributions théoriques et les implications managériales de cette étude sont discutées. Organization Theory, Strategy and IS 2 Twenty Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Paris 2008