ABSTRACT

Purpose: Prior literature has shown that the acceptance of new technologies can improve the long-term performance of sales forces and firms. However, new technologies are likely to introduce obstacles to acceptance, especially for those technologies that represent a massive change for the user. Sales force members who drastically change their work processes in order to integrate a technology sacrifice both time and effort and may be distracted from their primary goals (e.g. hitting deadlines or sales goals). Thus, we investigate how perceived technological change can negatively moderate individual motives to accept a new technology. Furthermore, we analyze how managerial support can help overcome the acceptance issues caused by perceived technological change.

Methodology/approach: Data for this study was collected from 163 sales force members via an online survey. Respondent data was collected using a private market research firm that provides access to online panels. We utilize structural equation modeling for factor analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for testing the hypotheses.

Findings: We find that perceived technological change negatively moderates the influence of individual goal orientation on to acceptance of new technology. We also find that managerial support, as opposed to team goal commitment, will positively moderate an individual’s goal orientation onto acceptance of new technology. This suggests that managerial support is necessary in order to encourage acceptance of technologies that present drastic change for the end user. Post-hoc analysis takes a deeper look into potential curvilinear effects, a three-way interaction, and differences among categories of technologies. This analysis reveals that the negative influence of perceived technological change specifically affects the acceptance of behavioral-based technologies, as opposed to outcome-based technologies, thus necessitating the moderating influence of managerial support.

Contribution: This study demonstrates the acceptance issues presented by technologies associated with drastic perceived technological change. This article identifies and suggests how to more appropriately enhance acceptance of technologies that introduce drastic changes by sales force employees, thus enhancing potential long-term organizational performance.

摘要

目的：现有文献表明，接受新技术可以提高销售人员和公司的长期绩效。但是，新技术可能会给接受带来障碍，尤其是对于那些对用户而言意义重大的技术而言。彻底改变工作流程以整合技术的销售人员牺牲了时间和精力，并且可能分散了他们的主要目标（例如，达到最后期限或销售目标）。因此，我们研究了感知到的技术变革如何负面影响个人接受新技术的动机。此外，我们分析了管理支持如何帮助克服由感知技术变革引起的接受问题。

方法/方法：本研究的数据是通过在线调查从163个销售人员中收集的。受访者数据是使用一家提供在线面板访问权限的私人市场研究公司收集的。我们利用结构方程模型进行因子分析，并利用普通最小二乘（OLS）回归来检验假设。

发现：我们发现，感知到的技术变化会消极地降低个人目标取向对接受新技术的影响。我们还发现，与团队目标承诺相反，管理支持将积极地缓和个人的目标取向，使其接受新技术。这表明管理支持是必要的，以便鼓励接受对终端用户带来巨大变化的技术。事后分析对潜在的曲线效果，三向交互以及技术类别之间的差异进行了更深入的研究。该分析表明，与基于结果的技术相反，感知到的技术变化的负面影响会特别影响基于行为的技术的接受，

贡献：这项研究证明了与急剧感知的技术变革相关的技术所带来的接受问题。本文确定并提出了如何更适当地增强对推销人员进行重大变革的技术的接受程度，从而增强潜在的长期组织绩效的方法。