Employees’ Adoption of Workplace Innovations

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the factors at employee level that influence the adoption of a customer-facing video conferencing software in an insurance company. Despite the associated benefit of significantly reduced driving times for the insurance agents, less than half of our sample finally adopted the software. We analyse the employees’ self-efficacy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, risk propensity as well as trust in superiors as factors influencing their adoption behaviour. Our findings indicate that risk propensity and trust in superiors influence the behaviour only insignificantly, whereas self-efficacy as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have an impact on the adoption behaviour. Surprisingly though, the extrinsic motivation points into the opposite direction as hypothesised. Employees who score high on extrinsic motivation are less likely to adopt this workplace innovation.

Keywords: workplace innovation, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, trust, risk propensity, innovation adoption