Shaping Behaviors Through Institutional Support in British Higher Educational Institutions: Focusing on Employees for Sustainable Technological Change

• Main Authors: Fuqiang Zhao, Fawad Ahmed, Muhammad Khalid Iqbal, Muhammad Farhan Mughal, Yuan Jian Qin, Naveed Ahmad Faraz, Victor James Hunt
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: intention to use; education management information systems; self-efficacy; institutional support; personal innovativeness; organizational support theory
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584857/full

Technology permeates all walks of life. It has emerged as a global facilitator to improve learning and training, alleviating the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional learning systems. It is imperative to identify enablers or inhibitors of technology adoption by employees for sustainable change in education management systems. Using the theoretical lens of organizational support theory, this paper studies effect of institutional support on education management information systems (EMIS) use along with two individual traits of self-efficacy and innovative behavior of academic employees in British higher educational institutions. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected through a questionnaire completed by 591 academic employees of 23 universities from 10 cities in the United Kingdom. Partial Least Square structural equation modeling was used to analyze data with smartPLS 3.2.9 software. Results indicate that institutional support promotes self-efficacy and innovative behavior that help develop positive employee perceptions. The model explains a 52.9% variance in intention to use. Post-hoc mediation analysis shows that innovativeness and self-efficacy mediate between institutional support and employee technology adoption behavior. As opposed to student samples in past studies on educational technology, this study adds to the literature by focusing on academic employees.