OOoCon 2005

Organizational and psychological details of OpenOffice.org suite adoption

S. Zappalà*, F. Massei*, M.Berti**

* University of Bologna - Italy
** YACME Srl Bologna - Italy

Agenda

Speaker Introductions

Ospedali Galliera migration project and implementation

Research design

Main measure and results

Summary and Conclusions

Q & A

Bios

Salvatore Zappalà

Professor in the Faculty of Psychology of Bologna University, focuses on “Psychology of work and organizations”.
He currently teaches “Psychology of economical behaviour” in the“Psychology of organizations and services” graduation program.

Maurizio Berti

Partner of Yacme company of Bologna since September 2000.
He's the supervisor of Yacme's OpenOffice.org division and is mainly involved in migration process management and training.

Migration?!?

It all began at the end of December 2004...

Ospedali Galliera

Genova

Ospedali Galliera's structure

Second health facility of Genova in size

Nationally prominent and highly specialized

500 beds

1000 employees

Ospedali Galliera

Genova

Document Production

600 users, medium to low level skills

Text documents

Spreadsheets

Presentations

About 20 document templates

Text documents

Number of existing documents unknown

Reasons of change

Open and standard data formats and interfaces for interoperability

Independence from unique supplier/technology

Source code availability

Data and document stored in many formats,
at least one must be open

Directive December 19th 2003 – MIT

Our plan

Issues on the field

Document exchange with the outside

Conversion of complex spreadsheets

A few operations too complicated

OOo performance

Now

Migration is planned to end by December 2005

September 2005

A few figures

530 pc's installed with OpenOffice.org

463 pc's without MS Office

29 pc's still with MS Office (Access, third party sw interaction)

23 pc's with medical report software
requiring MS Office

15 pc's under control for temporarily unresolved issues

ICT Adoption

Adoption of new technologies is related both

to economic and technical reasons, and

to organizational and psycho-social factors

“Users’ acceptance is the main factor for the success or failure of a new information system implementation (Davis & Ventakesh, 1996)”

“Understanding and creating the conditions under which the information systems will be embraced by the human organization remains a high-priority research issue” (Ventakesh & Davis, 2000)

Perceived
Usefulness

Perceived Ease of Use

Attitude

Organizat. Support:

* Co-workers

* Supervisors

* Organization

Collective Self-Efficacy:

Coworkers

Organization

Climate for Innovation:

* Support Innovation

* Task Orientation

* Participative Safety

Individual self-efficacy:

* General SE

* Personal comp. SE

Work Satisfaction

Evaluation

of change

Migration Presentat.

Emotion

Goals sharing

The project design

Aims of the research

To examinate how organizational and individual variables are related to the acceptance of ICT within Galliera employees

To test differences in attitudes to acceptance among different socio-demographic employees groups:
* sex, education, role, type of contract

To monitor acceptance and usage in the short and middle term after implementation

The climate inventory for innovation

Organisational climate: “shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices and procedures” (Anderson & West, 1998)

Three factors (64% var.):
* support for innovation
* task orientation
* participative safety

Item example:

3) This firm/hospital is open and responsive to change

8) Members of the firm monitor each other so as to maintain a higher standard of work

15) Perspectives of each members are taking into account, even if a minority ones

T.A.M. : attitudes to a new IT are influenced by “usefulness” and “easiness” of technologies

Two factors (78% var.):
* Perceived Usefulness
* Perceived Ease of Use

“How much you agree”:

6) The use of the new system increases job performance

9) To interact with the new system will not require much mental effort

4) The new system will be easy to use

The technology acceptance model

348 subjects involved in the migration

After the collective presentation, questionnaires offline and (later) online

N = 26 (52%) Offline

N= 24 (48%) Online	but 2 unusable quest. removed

Age: mean age: 42 y.o, St. dev. 8,6; (range 26 - 57)

Sex: Male 44%, Female 50%, Missing 6%

Contract: 56% Full time, 38% Contingent workers

Seniority: mean age: 18 y.o, St. dev. 9,2; (range 0 - 33)

Responsibility: 65% No, 22% little, 13% a large group/s

Subjects

Predictors averages and correlations -1

Predictors averages and correlations -2

Attitudes and Contextual var. averages
and correlations - 1

Attitudes and Contextual var. averages
and correlations - 2

Predictors and attitude correlations

Gender differences

1. The initial attitude towards OOo was rather positive

2. Attitude, but also Goals and Change were more influenced by:
* Easiness of Use, r.t. by Usefulness of new system
* Pc Self-Efficacy
* Positive emotional reaction/activation

3. Climate for innovation has a wide effect both on evaluation and acceptance of the new system

4. Supervisors’ support is very important as it is related both indirectly (through Organizat. Self -efficacy) and directly to Acceptance

Summary and conclusions

Questions?

OOoCon 2005

Organizational and psychological details of OpenOffice.org suite adoption

Thanks for your attention

S. Zappalà, F. Massei, M. Berti

Uno dei primi strumenti realizzati allo scopo di spiegare e prevedere l’accettazione individuale delle IT è il TAM che, individua le relazioni causali che legano le caratteristiche del sistema, la percezione di utilità, la percezione di facilità del suo utilizzo, gli atteggiamenti d’intenzione d’uso ed il comportamento d’uso reale

Per incrementare validità TAM si sono considerati altri fattori, tra cui caratteristiche di personalità come l’autoefficacia (Yi e Hwang 2003), e l’autoefficacia nell’uso del pc (Mariani); Partendo inoltre dalla constatazione che il fatto di trovarsi di fronte ad una situazione nuova e sconosciuta può provocare nei soggetti diverse reazioni emotive, alcuni lavori, come in quelli Roberts e Henderson (2000) e Venkatesh (2000) hanno analizzato l’influenza che questo fattore può avere sull’accettazione della nuova tecnologia.

Non sono però solo caratteristiche individuali o di personalità che giocano un ruolo di primaria importanza, si deve prendere in considerazione un livello di analisi più ampio, “macro”, così da poter individuare quelle caratteristiche dell’organizzazione che facilitano o ostacolano l’accettazione della nuova tecnologia.

Tutti i processi di innovazione, devono essere accompagnati da un clima in grado di favorire l’adozione delle nuove tecnologie (Baer e Frese 2003). Per far fronte alle difficoltà che normalmente si presentano i soggetti devono essere fiduciosi nel fatto che anche il loro gruppo di lavoro e l’organizzazione nel suo complesso, siano in grado di affrontarle con successo (Bandura 2000).

Un'altra variabile importante, è il sostegno fornito ai dipendenti dai colleghi, del gruppo di lavoro e dell’organizzazione. Il supporto sociale rappresenta infatti un fattore rilevante nel moderare gli effetti negativi, come ad esempio lo stress, che accompagnano i cambiamenti organizzativi (Swanson e Power 2001). Anche il sostegno dall’organizzazione, p. es con corsi di formazione o incontri mirati a spiegare le ragioni del cambiamento, possono influire sull’accettazione

Maurizio Berti

2005-09-27T08:31:51