Old Ways or New Bots: Conceptualizing Status Quo Bias and Corresponding Countermeasures for Robotic Process Automation

Abstract Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can drastically increase the efficiency of business processes within an organisation. Organizations use RPA to automate business processes quickly and easily. However, in practice, many RPA projects fail. A biased perspective on RPA can lead process participants to oppose its introduction, as they prefer the current way of operating. Status quo bias (SQB) – a biased preference for the current solution or way of doing things – can be one reason for a lack of acceptance in information systems (IS). SQB has often been researched in the context of IS; however, it has not yet been explored in the context of RPA. A biased perspective on the part of individuals is especially important for RPA due to the high level of involvement process participants have in the development process. If some individuals actively work to counter the introduction of such systems, driven by SQB, this situation can prevent organizations from taking advantage of the promise of the quick and easy implementation of RPA. This article offers a conceptualisation of SQB in the context of RPA. This lays the groundwork for an experiment to investigate both the extent to which SQB negatively affects the acceptance of RPA and to determine whether selected countermeasures help overcome this bias. As the results surprisingly do not support the literature-based hypotheses, the experiment is followed by an in-depth qualitative case study, expanding the insights obtained from the experiment. Ultimately, this article contributes to the theoretical understanding by reconceptualizing SQB for RPA and by discussing and evaluating appropriate countermeasures. In addition, the findings support practitioners’ efforts to overcome SQB and, thus, drive the introduction of RPA by being aware of its mechanisms and applying the countermeasures described.