Individuals’ IT-Change Readiness in Healthcare Organizations

IT-change readiness is an essential element of success in organizational information technology (IT) change intervention success for healthcare organizations. Change readiness research typically disregards the needs of individual constituents. We describe the experiences of medical professionals, IT professionals and managers in a medical organization in preparing for major IT-change due to a merger. We conducted a qualitative study in two medical organizations in the Netherlands via 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews using a replication logic. We analyzed the data using selective coding and thematic coding for grounded theory development. Six themes emerged from our study as factors contributing to individuals’ IT-change readiness: These are (1) individuals’ IT use frequency, (2) IT self-efficacy, (3) IT enjoyment, (4) anticipated IT usefulness, and (6) commitment. IT self-efficacy was influenced positively by people’s education level and inversely by their age. We identified sub-themes for given themes and developed propositions for future testing and generalization of our findings. These factors may be used in practice for hiring, promotion and training decisions.