Purpose

In the organizational technology acceptance (TA) decision-making process, stakeholders have many divergence opinions. Sometimes, an opposing stakeholder of a decision can stop the whole process of decision-making. In such a case, consensus may take a long time followed by a high risk. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, to find the best model with the least prediction error for the simulation of the consensus process in TA decisions. Second, to investigate the time required for the consensus process to yield the TA decision in different scenarios and to propose solutions to reduce the required time in a case study.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses real-world data containing 1,186 actual observations. Stakeholders are decision-maker agents, and the observations are derived from survey data and used for simulation. Data were obtained from 126 experts in the Iranian rail freight industry. Opinion dynamics theory was used for agent-based simulation of stakeholders’ behavior. The agents interacted over time and their effects on other agents’ opinions were investigated.

Findings

The results illustrate an appropriate opinion changing model, a data-gathering method and a simulation scenario for TA consensus. The suitable model was selected after examining the advantages and disadvantages of and comparing the prediction results for different models with the real database of opinions. To reduce the consensus process time, the results suggest gathering the team members and networking with some leaders as advocators. A large number of advocators with high acceptability and continuous exchanging messages with other agents can improve the acceptance rate and have the most significant impact on other stakeholders’ opinions.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, previous studies simulate individual TA processes. However, there is a difference between the individual TA and the organizational TA. The organizational TA requires the simultaneous decision-making of different stakeholders. In this research, the organizational TA was investigated.

中文翻译：

---

模拟利益相关者对组织技术接受的共识（案例研究：物联网）

目的

在组织技术接受（TA）决策过程中，利益相关者有很多分歧意见。有时，决策的反对利益相关者可以停止整个决策过程。在这种情况下，共识可能需要很长时间，然后是高风险。这项研究的目的是双重的。首先，寻找预测误差最小的最佳模型，用于模拟 TA 决策中的共识过程。其次，调查共识过程在不同情况下产生 TA 决定所需的时间，并提出解决方案以减少案例研究中所需的时间。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用包含 1,186 个实际观察的真实世界数据。利益相关者是决策者代理，观察结果来自调查数据并用于模拟。数据来自伊朗铁路货运行业的 126 名专家。意见动力学理论被用于基于代理的利益相关者行为模拟。代理人随着时间的推移进行互动，并调查了他们对其他代理人意见的影响。

发现

结果说明了适当的意见改变模型、数据收集方法和 TA 共识的模拟场景。在检查了不同模型的优缺点并将预测结果与真实意见数据库进行比较后，选择了合适的模型。为了减少达成共识的过程时间，结果建议召集团队成员并与一些作为倡导者的领导者建立联系。大量接受度高且不断与其他代理交换消息的倡导者可以提高接受率，对其他利益相关者的意见影响最大。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，以前的研究模拟了单个 TA 过程。但是，个人 TA 和组织 TA 之间存在差异。组织 TA 需要不同利益相关者同时做出决策。在这项研究中，对组织 TA 进行了调查。