Tina M. Loraas

Knowledge Sharing: The Effects of Incentives, Environment, and Person

ABSTRACT: We study factors that promote knowledge sharing in a professional service firm. We performed two laboratory experiments with MBA students acting as participants. Our results indicate that an incentive must be considered sufficient to promote full knowledge sharing regardless of the incentives type (monetary or nonmonetary). However, we find that the nonmonetary incentives used in our experiment were not deemed sufficient when participants self‐determined incentive sufficiency. Additionally, when the peer environment promoted knowledge hoarding, knowledge sharing dropped the most when incentives were initially deemed sufficient. Finally, we find that competitive individuals are active sharers of valuable, proprietary knowledge only when heir competitiveness is team‐oriented. To promote knowledge sharing, our results suggest careful monitoring of perceived incentive sufficiency, especially in the case of nonmonetary incentives, and a culture that directs employee competitiveness between teams.

Why Wait? Modeling Factors that Influence the Decision of When to Learn a New Use of Technology

This study examines the decision of when potential system users choose to learn new uses of technology. To explain the outcome of this decision, we construct a model based on deferral option pricing theory and operationalize its parameters through constructs consisting of anticipated emotions regarding failure costs, waiting costs, and potential rewards. Additionally we operationalize and test alternative explanations defining the outcome of when a new use of technology is learned and these consist of perceived usefulness of the technology, time pressure, and subjective norms. These decision determinants are examined across two experiments; each experiment using a vignette‐based methodology that evokes a different level of external motivation. In the case of a powerful external referent, subjective norms appear to crowd out intrinsic responses and they dominate the decision to learn a new use of technology. However, when an external referent does not dominate the decision setting, anticipated emotions in ...

Learning new uses of technology: Situational goal orientation matters

We study the decision to learn a new use of technology within a post-adoption context. This particular nuance of technology adoption is interesting because while the technology has been adopted at some level by both users and organizations, expanding technology use relies on users adopting additional tools and features within a given system on their own accord. This study addresses how situational goal orientation moderates the effects of ease of learning perceptions within the post-adoption context. We find that when a potential user has a situational learning goal orientation, they indicate intent to learn a new use of technology regardless of whether the technology is perceived to be easy or difficult to learn. However, potential users with a situational performance goal orientation indicate intent to learn the new system feature depending on ease of learning. These results have implications for future research using traditional technology acceptance parameters in the post-adoption context, and provide evidence that situational goal orientation is an effective managerial intervention for use in organizational training.

Learning new uses of technology while on an audit engagement: Contextualizing general models to advance pragmatic understanding

While most technology acceptance studies focus on initial adoption and use, an emerging stream of literature focuses on post-adoption behavior (Jasperson et al., 2005). This study adds to that stream by conceptualizing a model of the post-adoption process based upon the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003) and refined based upon work in effort expectancy and social influence (Loraas and Diaz, 2009; Schepers and Wetzels, 2007). The general model is then stylized to the auditing context and an experiment is conducted to test the efficacy of the proposed model. Inline with expectations, effort expectancy influences how an intern auditor thinks about learning a new feature of a technology. Specifically, when the technology is deemed difficult to learn, attitude, anticipatory affect, time budget pressure and social influence are important. However, when technology is easy to learn only self-efficacy and negative anticipated affect are enacted.

Learning New Technologies: The Effect of Ease of Learning

ABSTRACT:  Service professionals are often confronted with situations where they have the choice about whether to learn a new technology that could create efficiencies on both current and future engagements. We investigate how the perception of ease of learning affects this decision to voluntarily learn a new technology in the post-adoptive context. Using the elaboration likelihood model as a framework, we predict and find evidence that ease of learning perceptions drive the level of processing undergone by the potential user. When technology is easy to use, potential users rely on their situational learning dispositions. However, when the technology is difficult, suggesting a greater risk of failure, situational goal orientations are less influential, and potential users rely more on dispositional goal orientations. Our findings have implications for future research on technology acceptance and use, as well as ramifications for encouraging technology use “on the job.” Data Availability: Full instrument p...

Bridging the Gap between Spreadsheet Use and Control: An Instructional Case

End user applications (such as spreadsheets) have been cited as a previously ignored yet potentially significant risk to financial reporting in the wake of The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC] 2004; Ernst&Young [E&Y] 2004). We developed a realistic spreadsheet model in order to expose students to internal control issues inherent in a spreadsheet environment. By completing the case, students develop skills relating to auditing information systems and evaluating spreadsheet controls, functions, and formulas. Students also have an opportunity to improve written communication skills by conveying their findings to others in a memorandum.

The Effects of Quantification on Persuasion when Outcome is Uncertain: The Case of IT Security

Businesses are being targeted by cyber-extortionists at a minimum cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per year (Computer Crime and Security Survey 2004). A top reason listed for failure to incorporate better system security the inability to persuade top management of its value (Ernst and Young 2004). Previous studies suggest that quantitative arguments are more persuasive than qualitative arguments in business proposals, suggesting that proposals including the quantitative costs and benefits of system security would be appropriate to present to management (Porter 1995; Birdsell 1998; Kadous, Koonce, and Towry 2005). Due to the difficulties in quantifying returns in some projects, I look to theory in psychology to show when qualitative proposals would prove more effective. Goal framing has shown that emphasizing the negative is more persuasive than emphasizing the positive (Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth 1998). Following, I propose and find that in settings when the outcome is uncertain in quantitative terms, that qualitative arguments that accentuate the potential to avoid negative outcomes associated with lesser security are more persuasive than quantification.