Personal Innovativeness

There has been a lot of speculation with regard to the importance of personal innovativeness and user experience, when it comes to successful adoption of ERP. A number of people have anecdotal evidence that if ERP must succeed, then it should be handled by a person who has prior experience with similar software and/or must be innovative as well. After all, an enterprise resource planning solution can boost innovation at work, if the people who use it are innovative.

When you are unable to hire people with prior experience using ERP
User experience with software programs that handle business processes is one of the main criteria to hire managers today. It is becoming more important to recruit managers and even CEOs who are technically sound. Yet, it is not always possible to do so though it is important to have at least a few employees who are well versed with software programs and have prior user experience with ERP and other business process automation programs.

What would you do when you have no ability to hire someone with prior user experience with ERP or business software programs? Should you hire someone with a high rate of personal innovativeness? We found a study that directly correlates the success of ERP implementation with personal innovation even when user experience is low. In this article, we take a look at the study and discuss the findings.¹

The study, methodology and findings
Yujong Hwang (2014) published a paper in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, titled “User experience and personal innovativeness: An empirical study on the Enterprise Resource Planning systems”. The highlights of the study were that user experience and personal innovativeness are important in the adoption of ERP. The study also states that the influence of personal innovativeness is important in the context of extrinsic and intrinsic adoption motivations.

The study analyzed 107 responses divided among two groups for the purpose of comparing end users. The study provides valuable insights into the importance of user experience and personal innovativeness when it comes to ERP systems adoption. The paper argues that of the user has more experience with software suites, then the power of influence of personal innovativeness with respect to implementing ERP would be different.

The study used innovation diffusion theory, self-determination theory and other theories of motivation to find out if user experience with ERP really mattered. The two samples were divided based on their experience with ERP. Those with less than two years of experience with ERP were grouped under low user experience and those with more than three years of experience with ERP systems were grouped under high user experience.

The study concludes that when there is a higher rate of personal innovativeness, even the samples in the low user experience group were more motivated to adopt ERP systems.

Hire people with high rates of personal innovativeness, regardless of previous experience with technology
If you are hiring someone and are unable to ensure that the person has significant technical experience or user experience with ERP systems, make sure that the person is innovative. There are psychological and personality tests that determine how innovative a person is.

If a person has low experience with ERP or other business software programs but scores high on personal innovation scales in psychological tests, go ahead and recruit him or her. They will probably be more useful to your company when the time to install an ERP or some other business software program arrives.