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The use of microcomputers in the workplace has reached the same per capita penetration level in only a decade as the telephone did in approximately 75 years (Gantz, 1986). Despite the potential benefits of using microcomputers, such as enhanced individual peformance and productivity, there is a significant literature base that deals with individual difference characteristics associated with perceived negative aspects of computers (such as rejection of systems, averse psychological reactions; see Brod, 1984; Meier, 1988). However, recent surveys on attitudes toward computers suggest that attitudes are shifting from the fearful and awesome aspects of computers to positive factors (Gardner, et al., 1989; Howard and Smith, 1986; Lee, 1970; Ruth and Gardner, 1987; Weinberg and Fuerst, 1984). Yet, there is little research on microcomputers examining positive individual characteristics, such as playfulness, in computer interactions. Playfulness represents a particularly appropriate construct in the study of symbolic systems like human-computer interactions (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Hiemstra's (1983) interpretive analysis of employees' descriptions of computer interactions supports this assertion: employees frequently used the word "play" in their descriptions. Further, in Carroll and Mack's (1984) protocol analysis of naive users of computers, they concluded that the capacity to treat work as play characterizes successful adult learners and problem solvers. Microcomputers, specifically, seem to encourage the state of playfulness: they provide quick responses; they are often easy to use; and they can be tailored to the user's requirements (Starbuck and Webster, 1991). Thus, information systems researchers have called for further research in playfulness in human-computer interactions (e.g., Carroll and Thomas, 1988; Davis, 1989; Kamouri, et al., 1986; Katz, 1987; Malone, 1980; Ord, 1989).
Our focus in this research is on microcomputer playfulness. Microcomputer playfulness, a situation-specific individual characteristic, represents a type of intellectual or cognitive playfulness. It describes an individual's tendency to interact spontaneously, inventively, and imaginatively with microcomputers. Because interactions with microcomputers are symbolic in nature, playfulness is an apt construct in the study of human-computer interactions:
A symbolic system is like a game in that it provides a separate reality, a world of its own where one can perform actions that are permitted to occur in that world, but that would not make much sense anywhere else. In symbolic systems, the "action" is usually restricted to the mental manipulation of concepts...