Reconceptualising Motivation in Adoption and Acceptance Research: Back to Basics

In the adoption and acceptance of technology, the technology acceptance model (TAM) has been a dominant influence. TAM, however, simplifies and trivialises the concept of motivation, (a concept not well developed and used in the IS field) by failing to recognise the fundamental needs influencing behaviour. This, in turn, restricts its use to design and use interventions to enhance adoption and use within an ICT-enabled organisational change project. Given this, this paper will re-conceptualise the concept of motivation by exploring the inner or intrinsic motivation influencing behaviour and will indicate how this motivation underlies the TAM variables. Further, using the concept of participative management we will explore how various organisational interventions might be designed to enhance user motivation to adopt and use a new system. Finally, these interventions are applied to an ongoing action research study to improve the success of implementing a document management system within a non-profit organisation.