Workers’ Acceptance of Digital Procedures: An Application of the Technology Acceptance Model

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS There are increasing numbers of organizations that are implementing digital procedures (e.g., standard operating procedures). These efforts are often assumed to be a positive development but can be quite costly—both in terms of money and training for a digital rollout. As a result, organizations and practitioners may find themselves at risk for failure when implementing digital procedures. The results of the current study suggest that if workers perceive digital procedures as useful and easy to use, this perception translates into positive attitudes, which subsequently result in fewer deviations. Since acceptance is relatively easy to assess, practitioners can benefit from using these assessments prior to a digital transition/roll-out to both compare competing hardware and software applications, and to initiate and continuously monitor the development of digital procedures. We consider this approach as advantageous to having management develop a system and fully deploying digital procedures without any consideration of worker acceptance. TECHNICAL ABSTRACT Background: There is increasing prevalence of digital procedures being introduced in the process safety industries. Presumably, this increase is due to a desire to take advantage of the technology afforded to workers that otherwise is not inherent to traditional paper-based procedures. A critical question that has not been addressed, though, is to what extent do workers accept this new technology in a new digital procedure rollout? Furthermore, does acceptance lead to procedure-related behavior, such as procedure deviations? Purpose: We used the technology acceptance model (TAM), which includes two dimensions of technology acceptance—perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU)—as the focal antecedent constructs. We hypothesized that these constructs would predict more proximal attitudes toward procedures, which in turn predict procedure deviations. Method: We used path analyses to test six study hypotheses developed from the TAM. Data were collected from 16 workers at a large, international chemical corporation that worked in logistics. Specific measures obtained were from multi-item, Likert-scale measures of the TAM-PU and PEU dimensions, utility and compliance attitudes toward procedures, and procedure deviation frequency. Results: Four of the six study hypotheses were supported. TAM-PU and TAM-PEU both significantly predicted (positively) utility attitudes toward procedures (71% variance explained), whereas only TAM-PU significantly predicted (positively) compliance attitudes toward procedures (63% variance explained). In turn, only compliance attitudes significantly predicted (negatively) how frequently workers deviated from procedures (27% variance explained). Conclusions: These results suggest that workers were generally accepting of the digital procedures and that worker perceptions of perceived usefulness perceptions likely have an indirect effect on procedure deviation frequency. We see this study as a novel contribution to the process safety and procedures research domain. Limitations and future research directions will be discussed.