Employee attitudes toward working with computers

Abstract This paper presents a theoretical analysis and empirical observations about the correlates of employees' attitudes toward working with computers. A measure of attitudes toward working with computers was developed and tested on a sample of 284 white collar employee from three manufacturing organizations. The expected structure of 'positive' attitudes and 'negative' attitudes (concerns) about working with computers was confirmed. Following a review of the related literature five hypotheses were proposed. Use of computers and job involvement were predicted to be positively related to attitudes toward computers. And levels of job involvement were expected to moderate the relationship between usage of computers on the job and attitudes toward computers. Both hypotheses were confirmed, although different dynamics were observed with positive attitudes than with concerns. It was found that employees who use a computer to support their work hold more positive attitudes than employees who report very limited use of the computer. And employees who are highly involved in their jobs, or committed to their organization typically reported lesser concern about working with computers than employees at a low level of job involvement. Moreover, a significant interaction was observed between job involvement and usage of computers in their relationship to attitudes toward working with computers. Further directions for research and theory development are suggested.