INDIVIDUAL AND NETWORK INFLUENCES ON THE ADOPTION AND PERCEIVED OUTCOMES OF ELECTRONIC MESSAGING

Theories of organizational information processing and social influence are applied, using network analytical methods, to longitudinal data from a small government office surveyed immediately before, and nine months after, the implementation of an electronic messaging system. The results provide strong support for the role of a critical mass in influencing adoption and for the role of pre-usage expectations in forming enduring evaluations of some outcomes of an EMS. They also show slight support for the roles of social information processing and certain organizational information processing variables. Implications for theories and research designs concerning the use and impacts of computer-mediated organizational media are discussed. © 1990.