Sue Newell

Managers′ Beliefs about Factors Affecting the Adoption of Technological Innovation

Success in appropriating technological innovations is likely to be a key factor in maintaining a firm′s competitive advantage. Managers′ cognitions, or belief systems, play an important role in the decision‐making process that leads to the adoption of innovations, but research in this area has been neglected. Reports on a cognitive mapping methodology that has been used to reveal managers′ beliefs about the causes and effects of a particular type of technological innovation. These managers′ beliefs are compared with suggestions made in the academic literature about the factors that influence a firm′s level of innovation and some interesting differences are discussed. Concludes by examining the potential for cognitive mapping techniques to be used as practical tools to assist managers in their decision making.

The Importance of User Design in the Adoption of New Information Technologies: The Example of Production and Inventory Control Systems (PICS)

Given the importance of information technology in today′s society an understanding of the process by which technologies are diffused within and between societies is clearly important. Presents a model of this diffusion process which has been developed on the basis of an extensive research programme looking at the diffusion of production and inventory control systems within the components sector of British industry. This model suggests attention needs to be paid to three factors – the technological innovation itself, the vendors/suppliers of the innovation, and the user organization. Highlights the practical utility of this approach.

The Myth and Destructiveness of Equal Opportunities: The Continued Dominance of the Mothering Role

Uses data from a questionnaire given to 66 mothers of young children (a cross‐section) to examine the relation between women’s expectations and actual experience as they enter the job market in increasing numbers and the idea of equal opportunities. The majority of women undertook a greater share of childcare than their partner irrespective of whether they worked and a majority wanted more responsibility. Suggests that the rhetoric of equal opportunities may actually worsen the situation for women, who because of deepseated attitudes about their mothering role, strive to fulfil a dual role – and give a lower priority and less time to work than is expected of them.