Acceptance to Use a Corporate Communication System

Acceptance to Use a Corporate Communication System

ABSTRACT

This aims to propose a model based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to investigate acceptance of Microsoft Lync as an office communication system and its’ adoption by the employees of IFS R&D International(Pvt) Ltd in Sri Lanka. The study includes identification of the appropriate variables and their application to the context of this study. The acceptance model was developed based on TAM theory.

1.      Introduction to the Company and its’ Business Process

     IFS(Industrial and Financial Systems) is a globally recognized leader in developing and delivering business software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) based in Sweden. It was founded in 1983 and currently has over 2,600 employees. IFS supports more than 2,200 customers worldwide from local offices and through partners in more than 60 countries. Since 1997, all the product development and customer support operations have been outsourced to Sri Lanka. Currently, the operations in Sri Lanka consist of Development and Support Services, Research and Development and Corporate Services. Research and Development (R&D) Department is engaged in developing the application and providing fixes to the application bugs reported by customers. The Development Services group collaborates with identified IFS consulting companies globally, performing customizations and second line customer support remotely from Sri Lanka. The group currently has around 10 teams dedicated to specific customer projects managed by consulting offices in the USA, UK, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, Japan, Middle East and Africa. The Development Services teams mainly focus on fulfilling specific customer requirements that are not directly supported by core release(s) of IFS Applications. Also the teams analyze reported customer problems to identify causes and provide solutions with the support of R&D.

2.      Importance of communication in Current Business Process

     Once ERP application is implemented and gone live at customer’s site, any queries that arise will be forwarded to IFS through LCS (Life Cycle Support) system or by emails.  Business Analysts should then attend the customer inquiries and analyze them to see whether they are being core application bugs or caused due to any customization related problem. In case of a customization related matter, it is resolved within the Development Services department with the support of software engineers or else it is reported to R&D. In both instances, software engineers and Business Analysts at R&D should be guided to recreate the problem in their respective development environments in order to resolve the issue. In most of the times, communication with the regional consultants and product architects based in Sweden is necessary to proceed with the product solutions.  Therefore, both external and internal communications play a key role in successful delivery of customer solutions at IFS. The effective and faster internal communication enables to provide faster service to the customers. Earlier the communication was done mainly through emails and telephones, but it lacked the visual component, real-time desktop sharing and conferencing facility. Therefore, with the growth of the business, need for an effective internal communication system was raised in order to provide effective and efficient customer service.

3.      Microsoft Lync as an Internal Communication System

     Microsoft Lync is an enterprise communication software. Unlike Yahoo messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, it contains a different feature set targeted toward corporate environments. Lync provides a user interface based on identity and presence that brings together voice, instant messaging (IM), audio, video, and web conferencing. According to Wikipedia 2014, features of MS Lync can be listed as follows,

·         Users can chat, share photos, files and join a web conference with voice audio and video.

·         Availability of contacts based on MS Outlook contacts stored in a Microsoft Exchange Server

·         Lync-Skype linkage enables to communicate directly with customers and partners on Skype

·         Users can organize polls and all participants can vote and see results using Polling List.

·         Desktop/ Windows applications sharing allows participants to see and simultaneously work on a Windows /specific application screen

·        A number of client types are available for MS Lync including mobile clients.

     Due to above capabilities, MS Lync has been identified as an effective communication system and Corporate Services Department wanted to test its’ acceptance among employees of several teams in the Development Services and R&D departments before being introduced throughout the company. Based on TAM model, the aim of this study is to gather user perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the system during its’ pilot implementation and to identify the relevant factors that support the acceptance or rejection of the system

4.      Discussion

    Based on the application of Technology Acceptance Model in this study, it appears that TAM offers a very practical model that can be used to predict the degree of actual use of a system which is unfamiliar to users after being introduced to it.

    In this particular study, users unfamiliar with MS Lync were expected to rate their perceptions of the MS Lync after being shown a demonstration of its capabilities through a pilot implementation. Users' initial perceptions of MS Lync's usefulness and ease of use were influential on changing their attitude and intentions to use it. Their intentions to use the system could accurately predict the actual use of the system as user behavioral intentions always act as a strong predictor in system usage according to TAM theory.  Gathering of results for the identified item scales under the selected constructs like perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, users’ attitude towards using, behavioral intentions  provided Corporate Services Department with implications for better implementing its’ internal communication system.

5.      Conclusion

It’s found that user perceptions of a system are formed very early and they can have a strong influence on whether users will actually use that system in the future. In this study, the pilot implementation of the system among few selected teams in the organization provided an opportunity to understand the initial user perceptions of the system and accordingly predict its’ acceptance before its’ actual organization wide implementation. With TAM, designers, developers, or purchasers can more accurately assess whether any system will be accepted by users by gathering their perceptions of a system's usefulness, ease of use and take required actions to encourage end user acceptance of that system. Therefore in conclusion, TAM can be considered as an effective means of assessing and predicting system acceptability.

An Analysis of Cyberbullying Sensitivity Levels of University Students of Sri Lanka

While current communication technologies such as mobile phones, the internet and social network sites provide new opportunities for learning and interaction, they may also pose a threat to personal security. The rapid increase in access to information and communication technologies by young people can also cause those technologies to be used for bullying their peers leading to cyberbullying. The purpose of this study is to determine the cyberbullying sensitivity levels of university students and their perceived social supports levels, and analyze the variables that predict cyberbullying sensitivity. In addition, whether cyberbullying sensitivity levels and social support levels differed according to gender was also investigated.

The aggregate level of perceived social support of the university students were identified based on three main variables. They are family support, friends and support from the external environment. Data was collected through a questionnaire and the responses were scored on a five point Likert scale. The population of the study comprised of government university students of Sri Lanka. Among them 50 students voluntarily participated in this study. Thereafter the predicting factors that affect cyberbullying sensitivity were recognized through a stepwise regression.

The findings of this research show that the cyberbullying sensitivities of the students were high but their levels of the perceived social support were low. However the cyberbullying sensitivities of the female students are higher than the male students. Further the levels of social support did not differ according to the gender. Among the factors friends support was found to be the most impactful variable.

With the development of technology the means of communication have changed rapidly in the past few years. Today the internet and social media are frequently used to stay connected with people rather than face-to-face relationships. More than the adults the youth are attached to cyber communication as an integral part of their daily life. For the youth online communication has assisted to expand their social circle. Therefore youth are actively using the internet as a very convenient and important form of social interaction.

In Sri Lanka the access of young people to the internet have rapidly increased in recent years. Total internet connections grew by 68.4 percent during 2014 largely due to the growth of mobile internet usage. In 2013 internet connections grew by 47 percent, increasing internet penetration (connections per 100 persons) to 9.8 percent.

In the case of Sri Lanka social media has grown at an alarming rate. There are over 2.3 million users of social media from the total population of 21 million.  That means 11.5 percent of the Sri Lankan population use Facebook. When a gender breakup is considered around 1.4 million are males and the rest would be female.  It is estimated that on average they spend about 34 minutes a day on social media and the age group of 25-34 makes up 33 percent of the entire base.

While such developments have provided great opportunities it also brings new problems related to

social and individual development of young people. One of those main problems is cyberbullying, which is expressed as purposeful and repeated misuse of technology to scare and harm others. In the Sri Lankan context the rate of cybercrimes have increased rapidly according to the Computer Emergency Response Team. There were 900 incidents related to cyber offences reported from January till end of May, while in 2014 there were 2250 reported incidents of that nature. In 2012 and 2013 the reported incidents were 1100 and 1200 respectively. Based on the given statistics the number of offences have almost doubled from 2013 to 2014.

                                                                                     

While most of the studies in the literature focuses on the influences of cyberbullying on victimhood, cyberbullying sensitivity of people is mostly ignored. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate

cyberbullying sensitivity levels of university students, who are among the potential victims of cyberbullying and whether this could be used to predict cyberbullying sensitivity

The effects of new technologies which have developed rapidly during the recent years

have affected every institution of the society, and the use of new technological products such as cell phones, the Internet and social network sites have become very much popular among  the younger crowd. From this crowd it is essential to understand how this had impacted on university students as they are more educated and updated in terms of using such technology. While these communication technologies provide new opportunities to learn and interact, they could also form a threat to personal security. One of those major threats is cyberbullying.

When the cyberbullying sensitivity levels of university students were analyzed it could be concluded

that the cyberbullying sensitivity levels of students were high. The reasons could be due to the fast spread of the internet and other social media platforms among the youth and the convenience of access through mobile communication. On the other hand the students do not agree that the level of perceived social support was adequate. Since the virtual world provides more freedom, it promotes motivation for indecent behaviors. People are able to hide their identities easily during interaction. Also it frequently occurs outside university space. As the threat of cyberbullying involves privacy and relationships individuals are more prone to recognize cyberbully as a concern. Further the cyberbullying sensitivity of female students was found to be higher than the male students. But however even though social support is vital to decrease the negative effects of bullying students have stated that the level of social support they perceive is low. Both the male students and female students have recognized this fact.

Secondly the level of perceived social support do not differ based on the gender. A significant differentiation in favor of female students was found in the cyberbullying sensitivity of male and female students when the gender variable was considered. Higher levels of sensitivity among the female students was related to witnessing or experiencing cyberbullying. 

Human grievances when implement the technological change

 Human grievances when implement the technological change

Difficult in manage outsource locations and delay in supplier payments

Operation mechanisms are comparatively complicated, even though there are two manufacturing locations many outsource locations produce the goods to ship. To some outsource locations materials are provide by the company and other outsource locations source their material themselves. So two different cost structures are there with two different purchasing mechanism and sometime one outsource locations are follow both ways to provided goods to company. Such situations are not address by the system previously hence many disparage situations were occurs. Hence suppliers are dishearten due to hold of their payments and it will tend to create many disparate situations.

   Delaying the shipments to the customers

Eventhough the intention of implement ERP system to facilitate and provide better services to overseas customers, it was experience there are many disputes occurs within the system when cargo dispatch from the factory. Due this reason many containers were unable to load on the planed vessels and claim for delay shipments by customers. When tailored the system many work in progress stores were define to get the correct cost absorption to the product, hence all products should pass these relevant locations to accomplish as finish good. But due to many inter dependencies within the system it was congested without appear the sufficient finish good stock in loading warehouse, and general users cannot identify the exact module where it got stuck.  

     Depressed workforce and tendency to leave the organization.

More talent people are heavily depressed the situation irrespective of their age limit but more young executives are leave the origination due to this unwanted pressure and old chaps were remain without voicing & challenge the situation. Later it realize there are few young people remain in the organization who earn the knowledge & experience by on the job training that can rectify the situation by identifying the exact details penetrate the system in depth. But this process took comparatively long period and it setup some organizational hierarchy as well.

System authority structure not accord with the actual work authority structure. Redefine the real work authorities are much hard and harmful for the business continuation with human factors. The emotional cycle of change which shows here, explain the same like it explain in TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) model. It shows human stability how affect with new operational platforms especially on technology moves. When it change the adopted life & working pattern such resistance occurs naturally as a human behavior. What it can do to minimize the damage reduce and manage the emotional & behavioral levels. The other way is reduce the time for adoption the change. To manage above two factors following three major undertakings are vital on the change.

1.      Well enough training to real users who perform the job on floor

2.      Proper leadership with well awareness of the change requirement

3.      Flawless communication to explain the broad need of the change.

In such system implementation, it may not enough to train only the performing part to users. They should have overall training of the entire system architecture to understand what action will have an impact on where in the system. High caliber leadership is really essential with the knowledge of change to balance and motivate the team of users. If such malfunction occurs he should able to get immediate remedial actions make ease to the users till they familiarizes to the system by themselves. Communication is nother vital parameter of successful implementation by informing to all users the real impotency of the system implementation. If all users aware the big picture of the implementation it will really help to achieve the required attitude from the users. Hence all internal variable can manage in order to shape up the external variables with a proper blen of above three factors.

  Conclusions

Technology Acceptance Model is very popular to explain the guess of system use specially technology base systems. Here the experienced with describe example manage the people grievances is most important. The TAM is give good enough platform to pre study the possible and potential issues that can be arise. Further the external variable are not uniform and it vary place to place and situation to situation. Hence the effective factors should read before decisions of systems implementation in depth and detail to avoid any malfunctions after implementation of such systems. Even the same system with same users may behave differently in changed environments. External factors