The effects of cultural archetypes on the perceived usefulness of IT: evidence from a UK public sector organisation

A long-standing inquiry that has persisted in practice and research over the years is how to explain the uptake of information systems by users. A key indicator of systems being accepted by users is that they are used by individuals and that they consider them to be useful. Specifically, one of the most well-established measures that has been used to assess the extent to which users find IT useful is perceived usefulness, which in turn is influenced by users cultural values, assumptions and behaviours. Nevertheless, researchers have pointed to the lack of insights on the cultural factors that explain users perceived usefulness of IT. A recent theoretical advance in the IS literature, the IT culture concept, allows the identification of user archetypes grounded in their needs and motivation to use IT. As a consequence of adopting this concept, this research has provided insights on users cultural values and for the first time portrayed how cultural archetypes influence the perceived usefulness of IT. Using data obtained from a survey of 270 IT users within a local council in the UK, five cultural archetypes (the social users; the compliant-dodgers; the interested users; the high intensity users; and the dangerous users) were identified through a multivariate cluster analysis, while their effects on the perceived usefulness of IT was conducted using a multiple regression analysis. Overall, this thesis makes theoretical and practical contributions. Drawing on the IT culture concept, this study provides deeper understanding of cultural archetypes within an organisational context. It extends current IT culture literature by investigating the influence of cultural archetypes on the perceived usefulness of IT. In addition, the results also provide managers with insight on how to deal with employees that exhibit these cultural archetypes. Moreover, our study shows that business leaders may find it useful to embrace a diversified strategy that responds to the needs and motivation of IT users within their organisation.