Towards an understanding of user-centeredness within information technology diffusion: A self-ethnography

The main argument of the dissertation is that the end user is important in the IT diffusion process and integral in its success. Couched in my experience and informed by philosophy the suggestion is that Information Technology (IT) diffusion as change and innovation is successful if the users of the innovation are involved as integral components in its implementation and if that implementation results in meeting or exceeding the needs of the user.; When the user is part of an organization, communication about the IT as change and innovation becomes important at the macro level, the level of organizational discourse, and the micro level, the level of daily interpersonal interaction. Obtaining evidence about the nature of an organization's discourse and whether it is centered on the end users to include their needs should help in understanding IT diffusion and IT diffusion success.; This dissertation studies IT diffusion within a library that is part of a large research library system in a university. It uses the self-ethnography as a research approach where I as researcher use my position as manager in the library to gain research insight. The self-ethnography resulted in the selection of 16 IT diffusion cases using an integrated theoretical approach in the case selection and then in the case analysis.; The integrated theories were drawn from scholars Everett Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations), Brenda Dervin (Sense-making), and Karl Weick (Organizational Sense-making). The work of these scholars was further integrated with the direction of IT literature and its influence on the end user. The integrated approach used in this thesis identified one salient dimension from each of the four theories and used the four dimensions to analyze the 16 cases that were selected.; Subsequent to the analysis the implications of the integrated approach on the user, management, organization, and the self-ethnography approach was explained.