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This research investigates how knowledge workers are influenced to adopt the advice that they receive in mediated contexts. The research integrates the Technology Acceptance
Model (Davis 1989) with dual-process models of informational influence (e.g., Petty and Cacioppo 1986, Chaiken and Eagly 1976) to build a theoretical model of information adoption. This model highlights the assessment of information usefulness as a mediator of the information adoption process. Importantly, the model draws on the dual-process models to make predictions about the antecedents of informational usefulness under different processing conditions.
The model is investigated qualitatively first, using interviews of a sample of 40 consultants, and then quantitatively on another sample of 63 consultants from the same international consulting organization. Data reflect participants' perceptions of actual e-mails they received from colleagues consisting of advice or recommendations. Results support the model, suggesting that the process models used to understand information adoption can be generalized to the field of knowledge management, and that usefulness serves a mediating role between influence processes and information adoption. Organizational knowledge work is becoming increasingly global. This research offers a model for understanding knowledge transfer using computer-mediated communication.
(Computer-Mediated Communication; Field Study; Informational Influence; e-Mail; Usefulness; Information Adoption)
Introduction
A consultant is designing a new distribution process for a client in an unfamiliar industry. She asks several people in her formal and informal networks for some advice concerning a particularly complex part of the process. She also posts the question on the organization-wide electronic bulletin board system. In response to these inquiries she receives half a dozen different e-mails, from people with varying degrees of expertise in the area and industry, some of whom she knows better than others. How does she sort through the advice in these e-mails to decide which action to take?
This scenario exemplifies one problem of knowledge transfer in organizations, specifically, knowledge utilization or adoption. While engaged in knowledge work, workers must comprehend the knowledge they receive, discern the complexities and subtleties of it, and incorporate it into their schemas and mental models. Meaningful learning and insightful problem solving require that learners reorganize and integrate new information into their cognitive structures (Ausubel 1963). Only then can they determine a course of action that seems to best serve their...