Impact of communications channels on adopters' perceptions of an organizational transformation

Purpose. Organizations must continuously change to stay competitive in their industry. In many cases the business transformation processes include a technology component. For these innovations to successfully support the change in the organization, employees must adopt the innovation. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of two communication channels: a blended training program and a communication web site on the perceptions of adopters during a business transformation. Rogers' (1995) studies have found 49 to 87 percent of the variance in rate of adoption could be attributed to perceived attributes of innovations.; Methodology. The research design for this exploratory study was a quasi-experimental, post-test only design with use of an appended control group. The Perceived Characteristics of Innovating (PCI) Scales by Moore and Benbasat (1991) were used to measure the perception of employees toward the technology innovation. The 236 participants in the treatment and control groups responded to the 25-item survey available on the organization's Intranet. The treatment group's survey results were then correlated with blended training program assessment scores and communication web site visits.; Findings. This study found that these communication channels do have an impact on the perception characteristics of adopters. The perception characteristics and the blended training program assessments had statistically significant positive relationships with five of the eight perception characteristics. It was also found that certain components of the blended training program had significant relationships with more of the perception characteristics. The results of this study show the impact of communication channels on the adopter's perception characteristics during a business transformation.