Objetivo general

Concluding from the two sub-research questions, several factors with different degrees of importance could be identified that have an influence on ORFC-E2.0. Concerning the psychological factors, PSY-CV, PSY-DISC, PSY-TSE and PSY-APP were identified as causal conditions of ORFC-E2.0. It should be noted, however, that the strength for the evidence found in the data for these factors decreases in the order they were mentioned. Particularly, this means that while PSY-CV, for example, has a groundedness score of 8, the groundedness score of PSY-APP is only 1. Furthermore, as already mentioned in Section 4.2.1, no clear differentiation between PSY-DISC and PSY-APP could be es- tablished. In addition to the afore-mentioned psychological factors, PSY-PS, PSY-IT, PSY-CT and PSY-PEXC, were identified as intervening conditions that are suspected to mitigate the causal conditions. For PSY-PS and PSY-IT considerably strong evidence was found in the data.

With regards to the context-related factors, CON-ORGLEAD, CON- ORGSTRUC, CON-ORGPROC, CON-ORGCUL, industry pressure, CON-ORGRES and CON-ORGID were identified. Except for the last two very strong evidence was found in the data corpus. All of them were discovered to be contextual conditions of ORFC-E2.0. However, particularly CON-ORGLEAD seems to play a very important role, as several actions related to leadership as well as action/interaction strategies that can be used by organisational leaders to facilitate ORFC-E2.0 were discovered. Among others, these for instance included to make use of ambidextrous leadership practices, establishing a vision for the change and involving employees in the change process. In addition to that, CON-ORGLEAD was also found to interact with the psychological factor principal support. However, based on the analysed data, the type of interaction could not be further specified.

In addition to the afore-mentioned factors some of the socio-technical factors of the UTAUT model, i.e. TECH-PEX and TECH-EEX, were also found to be relevant for the establishment of ORFC-E2.0. With a groundedness score of 23 for TECH-EEX par- ticularly strong evidence was discovered in the data. While the groundedness for TECH-PEX was a bit lower (i.e. 9), based on the data analysis and by acknowledging the density of other associated factors, both TECH-PEX and TECH-EEX were consid- ered as causal conditions of ORFC-E2.0. Further, with a groundedness factor of 15, SO- CM that is the critical mass required for ESS adoption to be sustainable, was identified as an intervening condition.

Figure 22 The relationships between the UTAUT and RFC factors and their meaning for ORFC-E2.0 described by the conditions of the GT paradigm.

5

Discussion

Two goals were pursued in this study. First and foremost, this research aimed at answer- ing the question what different factors influence the organisational readiness for change towards the planned adoption of Enterprise Social Software within the context of a knowledge-intensive business service company. In order to achieve these goals, a com- prehensive explorative study has been conducted. The data was collected through (1) a review of extant literature, (2) semi-structured interviews with organisational managers and experts, and (3) focus group interviews with organisational staff members. Then, Grounded Theory techniques were used to code and structure the collected data, and in a last step ANT logic was applied to analyse the data and to develop a model, by means of which organisations can better understand which factors may influence the organisa- tional readiness of organisations regarding the planned adoption of ESS. This model is depicted in Figure 19.

Figure 19 ANT of the KIBS organisation depicting the actors and their different roles as source, target and translators.

Specifically, the model shows that there is a very heterogeneous network with a variety of different human, non-human as well as conceptual actors. First of all, as the central phenomenon, there is organisational readiness for change regarding the adoption of ESS (ORFC E2.0), indicated by the yellow bubble with the double border. Next to ORFC E2.0 there are the human actors, (1) individual employees, (2) groups of employees, (3) the management of the organisation, and (4) the organisation as a whole. In addition to that, there is the technology itself, the ESS platform the managers of the KIBS company plans to adopt and use. Lastly, there are the various factors that were identified during the analysis of the empirical data using Grounded Theory coding techniques. In order to visualise the model in a clearly manner, only the most important factors are shown on a meta-level, based on their groundedness score.

It has been noted that the different actors in an actor-network influence each other through the process of translation. A translation is successful when interest is aroused, for example, when an idea, is appealing to another actor so that it wants to join the network. If this is achieved, alliances are established. Through these alliances a net- work can grow and so does the importance of an actor. If the network stabilises it be- comes more integrated and converges. This implies that actor’s activities are better aligned (Callon, 1992), for example regarding the readiness for the adoption of ESS.

In the actor-network depicted in Figure 19, several relationships can be found. ESS, for example, influences or translates organisational management through reasons for adoption, (1) knowledge sharing, (2) conversation of knowledge, (3) collaboration, and (4) working remotely. In turn, managers influence ESS through their plan to adopt it. Similarly, managers use organisational leadership (ORG-LEAD) as a translator, in order to influence employees with regard to the adoption of ORFC-E2.0. This can for instance be achieved by tactics or strategies, such as establishing a vision or involving employees in the change process. These organisational leadership strategies act as trans- lators for individuals, in order to convince them to forge alliances with ORFC-E2.0. In addition to that, organisational management can make use of principal support (PSY- PS) – that means supporting the change process towards adopting ESS – in order to influence individual employees.

Apart from the organisational management, the organisation itself can influence ORFC-E2.0 through contextual factors, such as organisational culture, organisational structure, organisational resources and organisational identification. At the same time, these contextual factors can also influence individual employees, and act as translators towards ORFC-E2.0. Next to the contextual factors, psychological factors, such as indi- vidual trust (PSY-IT), collective trust (PSY-CT), technology self-efficacy (PSY-TSE), discrepancy of the change (PSY-DISC), expected benefits (EXB), change valence (PSY-CV) and perceived costs (PEC), can act as facilitators or inhibitors towards

ORFC-E2.0. The psychological factors, in turn, can be influenced by organisational management through organisational leadership. Also, technological factors, such as performance expectancy (TECH-PEX), effort expectancy (TECH-EEX) or expected security (TECH-ESC) may influence individual employees. Lastly, groups of employ- ees may be influenced in developing readiness for ESS through collective commitment by colleagues towards the change initiative as well as to use ESS when a critical mass of other users exists to do so.