2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Dissatisfaction Does Not Mean Rejection: A Theory of Reinvention of
Applicable Technologies by Mindful and Unfaithful Users
Saggi Nevo
University at Albany
snevo@albany.edu
Dorit Nevo
York University
dnevo@yorku.ca
use/nonuse dichotomy—is likely too narrow to
adequately describe the reality of the post-adoption
behavior landscape in the context of organizational
IT.
Instead, we posit that use and nonuse are likely
the endpoints of a continuum of behaviors toward
technology. Between these two extremes we identify
a range of reinvention acts, where organizational
members neither mindlessly use fixed and predetermined technological artifact designs nor
inflexibly discard them because of lack of perceived
value or difficulties with their operation. Rather, we
view organizational members as active and creative
actors who continuously shape and mold their
technologies when those are deemed unsatisfactory,
or when new opportunities and novel contexts for
their use are discovered.
Before we continue, we briefly discuss two
boundary conditions to help the reader understand the
scope of the proposed theory. First, we acknowledge
that reinvention is not expected to play a major role
in the post-adoption behavior of users of technologies
such as smart-phones, online video games, webstores,
and movie websites, which cannot be significantly
modified by the user. These consumer products and
services tend to consist of tightly-coupled sets of
components, offering little in terms of potential
reinvention. Additionally, unlike many mandatory
organizational technologies nonuse is clearly a viable
option in the case of these consumer products.
Second, the reinvention of technologies by their users
was probably not an important phenomenon in the
past when the technologies implemented were
primarily intended for the automation of welldefined, repetitive, sequences of operations and
transactions [37; 40]. Yet, the view of an unchanging
IT, which is adopted and implemented with virtually
no adaptation appears to inadequately reflect a reality
in which the technology implemented is often
customizable, flexible, and open-ended [40; 42; 48].
For contemporary organizational IT, reinvention
might not be a rare occurrence, and there is growing
evidence to show that users engage in reinvention of
workplace technology.
There are different reasons why users reinvent
their technologies, such as dissatisfaction with the
status quo technology or exploring new opportunities
and contexts. In this paper our focus is reinvention
If you accept your misfortune, and
handle it right, your perceived
failure can become a catalyst for
profound reinvention.
Conan O’Brien – Dartmouth’s
Commencement Address, June 12
2011.
Abstract
The prevailing view in IS research considers
technology users as passive actors in the innovation
diffusion process who face only two possible
behaviors regarding the technology they receive –
i.e., either use or nonuse. According to this view,
individuals either accept the technology as it is
presented to them or outright reject it. We contest
this view and propose that a third behavior more
accurately characterizes the landscape of postadoption behaviors – that is, IT reinvention. We
argue that reinvention is important for post-adoption
IS research and propose a new theory. By tracing a
path from IT dissatisfaction to technology
reinvention, this paper makes several contributions to
IS research and practice. First, it sheds lights on a
complex phenomenon – that is, the consequences of
IT dissatisfaction. Second, the paper informs
managers on how to view IT dissatisfaction as a
possible occasion for technology reinvention, with
potentially positive outcomes.
1. Introduction
A prevailing view in IS research considers
technology users as passive actors in the innovation
diffusion process who face only two possible
behaviors: technology use or nonuse [1; 22; 37; 51;
52]. According to this perspective, potential users of
a newly implemented technology are given a prepackaged, black-boxed, technological artifact and
then must decide whether to wholeheartedly adopt it
or outright reject it. Viewing IT this way inhibits our
understanding of post-adoption behaviors [21; 42,
since contemporary organizational IT are often
designed and created with built-in flexibility that
allows for their customization, adaptation, and even
transformation by users [19; 37; 40; 47]. We argue
that the prevailing view—of an all-or-nothing,
978-0-7695-4525-7/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.221
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stemming from IT dissatisfaction, as we describe
next.
hospital and was designed for direct entry by
physicians. According to the authors, the source of
the “The physicians’ dissatisfaction… [was that] the
machine could not keep up with [them].” As a result
of this IT dissatisfaction, “the hospital appointed a
nurse to enter data for them.” Orlikowski [39]
discusses the implementation and use of an incident
tracking support system (ITSS) within the customer
service department (CSD) of a certain organization.
According to the author, users’ (i.e., the CSD
specialists’) dissatisfaction with the “navigation of
ITSS’ structured data entry screen [that] was
incompatible with how information was provided by
customers,” resulted in the “Specialists’ practice of
working around the direct electronic entry of calls.”
Orlikowski refers to this “bypassing of direct entry”
as a technological improvisation. Another example of
reinvention as a result of dissatisfaction with IT is
provided by Boudreau and Robey’s [8] study of an
ERP implementation. In this case study, dissatisfied
“users deviated from prescribed work processes, and
‘tweaked the system’ to make it respond to their
needs. Through such tweaking (also called
workarounds), users sought to circumvent the rigid
work processes embedded into Compass’s software
routines, thereby making the system work in ways
that they could better understand and control. In some
cases, users established workarounds to compensate
for what they considered deficiencies within the
system.” Also, in the same case study, the authors
observe that “[a]lthough most users understood that
this feature provided greater security, they felt that
the feature limited their freedom. Many users devised
ways to beat the system.” The authors then note that
“These reinventions allowed users to… compensate
for [the ERP’s] perceived limitations.”
In sum, we envision dissatisfaction with
organizational IT not necessarily as an unfortunate
end-state of technological implementation or as an
indication of a failed IT project, but rather, under
certain conditions (discussed in subsequent sections),
as an occasion for possible reinvention of the
technology by its users. We elaborate on the notion
of reinvention next.
2. IT Dissatisfaction
Satisfaction with technology is considered an
important indicator of technological innovation
success since it is expected to foster positive attitudes
toward the technology and lead to its continued use
[5; 22; 31; 43; 45; 52; 59]. In a similar fashion we
can link IT dissatisfaction with technology rejection,
nonuse, and discontinuance [6; 31]. Such a view of
satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with IT and its
consequences is consistent with its theoretical
foundation – namely, consumer behavior research
[38; 49]. Indeed, when viewed as a consumer, an
individual who purchased, say a Webcam (or a
monthly subscription to Netflix or a World of
Warcraft for that matter), and who is satisfied, is
likely to continue using it. On the other hand, the
individual is also in a position to discontinue his use
of the product or service if he becomes dissatisfied
with it.
However, we contend that IT dissatisfaction must
not always lead to rejection of the technology by its
users; least of all in the context of installed
organizational IT. Primarily, organizational members
may feel dissatisfied with a certain workplace
technology but are forced to continue their use of it
[8; 23]. That dissatisfaction with IT can lead to its
reinvention by users is consistent with the more
general notion that dissatisfaction with the status quo
propels individuals to search for improved conditions
[34]. This suggests that when the use of an
organizational IT is compulsory, and therefore the
technology cannot be discarded or its use
discontinued [21], dissatisfied users might initiate a
search for ways to improve the technology or develop
new ways for using it. In fact, we go further and
argue that even if individuals use a technology out of
their own volition it is not obvious that users’
reaction to IT dissatisfaction would always be to
discard the technology. Instead, if the adaptation and
modification an installed IT are possible, dissatisfied
users might search for ways to improve it even when
nonuse is possible. Notwithstanding the possibility of
reinvention of noncompulsory organizational IT, in
this paper we focus on mandatory IT use, which we
note is typical of many organizational settings [9;
23].
We resort to several examples to illustrate the
notion that dissatisfaction with IT can lead to
technology reinvention. Consider, for example,
Lapointe and Rivard [28], where an electronic
medical records technology was implemented in a
3. Reinvention
Reinvention is defined as the degree to which an
innovation is changed or modified by a user in the
process of adoption and implementation after its
original development, and may involve both the
innovation as a tool and its use [46; 47; 48]. Building
on Rogers et al., in the context of IT, reinvention can
be measured as the degree to which an individual’s
use of a new technology departs from the core or
mainline version of the technology. The absence of
reinvention indicates high fidelity between the
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technology’s intended use and design and its actual
use [30].
In related literature, in the late 1980s, scholars
such as Leonard-Barton [29] and Zuboff [60]
recognized the possibility of technology adaptation
and its potential benefits in the post-adoption phase.
Later, DeSanctis and Poole enhanced our collective
understanding of this phenomenon by developing
adaptive structuration theory [16; 44]; and
Orlikowski et al., in a series of case studies clearly
described the process of adaptive structuration of new
technologies by their users [39; 40; 41; 56]. More
recent case studies, and a few quantitative studies,
continue to support the notion that technologies do
not remain static after their implementation and are
often adapted by their users [22; 8; 19; 32; 37; 51].
Such adaptation is considered to have positive impact
on the users and their organizations, including an
improved fit between users and the technology and
adapting to changes within the organization [2; 10;
21; 56].
These works suggest that technological artifacts
reflect the more general innovation diffusion process
in which adoption is not an all-or-nothing process.
Instead, users are active agents of intra-organizational
implementation and adoption [30]. According to this
view, the choices available to a potential adopter are
not just adoption or rejection; modification of the
innovation or selective adoption (or judicious
rejection) of some components of the innovation may
also be options [46]. As such, users become part of
the innovation process, where innovations that were
constructed by designers are subsequently
reconstructed by their users [7]. Therefore, an
innovation is not a fixed entity, which enters a social
system (e.g., an organization) from the environment
and is then mindlessly adopted, but rather is adapted
as it diffuses throughout a social system [48].
We subscribe to Rogers et al.’s assertion that
reinvention exists, is not necessarily bad, and is a
natural part of the innovation process [46; 47; 48].
Therefore, recognition of the existence of reinvention
can bring into focus a different, and potentially more
accurate, view of technology post-adoption
behaviors. Wearing the lens of reinvention we
recognize that within an organizational context,
instead of simply accepting or rejecting a
technological innovation, potential adopters are
active participants in the adoption and diffusion
process, and they generally think that reinvention is a
good thing. Unfortunately, such a non-deterministic
view of technology has not, for the most part,
informed our models of technology post-adoption
behaviors, and the notion of reinvention remains
underexplored and underutilized [19]. Accordingly,
potential users are still predominantly treated as
passive actors in the diffusion process. When a less
deterministic view is adopted it is primarily to reflect
a change of perceptions [6; 24] or of frequency of use
[31], but a more active role for users is yet to be
acknowledged. Thus, our knowledge of post-adoption
behaviors, especially those that conform neither to
use-without-change nor to complete rejection,
remains lacking.
Throughout this paper, we refer to several
published case studies to help describe the process of
reinvention of organizational IT by their users. In this
section we report on three different technologies,
each implemented in a different organization. First. in
Fedorowicz and Gogan [19], we learn about a public
health interorganizational technology that was
designed and implemented with the intension of
serving as a tool for early detection of bio-terror
attacks but, according to the authors, was later
reinvented to serve a broader set of goals. Second, in
Lapointe and Rivard [28], an electronic medical
records technology was reinvented to modify the
manner in which patient information was entered.
Third, in Orlikowski and Hofman [40], an incident
tracking support system (ITSS) was reinvented as a
training tool: “As the number of incidents in ITSS
grew, some senior specialists began to realize that
they could use the information in the system to help
train newcomers.” Also in the same case, “[users]
incorporated enhancements to the ITSS system as
they realized ways to improve ease of use and access
time.” Based on their findings, the authors observe
that the users “conceived of and implemented the
changes in situ and in response to the opportunities
and issues that arose as [they] gained experience and
better understood the new technology and the
particular use of it.”
The third case might give the impression that
reinvention is an indication of extended or enhanced
use of the technology [21], however this is not
always the case; for example, in Lapointe and Rivard,
reinvention was a result of group of users’ (the
physicians’) dissatisfaction with the focal technology.
Another case study illustrating the notion that
reinvention need not lead to feature extension is
provided by Orlikowski [41]. In this case, a new IT
was implemented in order to “address the
considerable [redundancy] which occurred when
Alpha consultants in different offices worked on
similar client problems without sharing ideas,
approaches,
or
solution.”
However,
once
implemented, consultants’ “use of Notes was
minimal, even perfunctory, and involved opening
electronic mail folders a few times a week, rarely, if
ever, sending a message, and only occasionally
accessing a discussion database to examine activity in
it… [They saw it as] countercultural and
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incompatible with their individual advancement and
success in the firm.” It is interesting to note that
within the same organization, a small group of
consultants “saw [the IT] as an opportunity to
enhance their own individual effectiveness by
speeding up existing ways of doing things… [and]
began to use Notes regularly to perform activities
previously conducted on paper or with other media.
Some also used Notes to obtain electronic
newsfeeds... These consultants believed their use of
Notes would give them a competitive edge in their
firm by advancing their personal productivity…
[They] engaged specific properties of Notes to enact
a set of rules and resources which increased their
work productivity and incrementally modified the
technology.” Both groups of users (more precisely,
subgroups of the consultant group) reinvented the
technology, albeit in different ways; the technology
was intended as a tool for knowledge sharing but was
appropriated in manners not consistent with such
view, to varying extents, and with different results.
According to Lewis and Seibold, negative
attitudes, lack of respect toward, and discomfort with
the innovation will be strongly related to lack of
fidelity in innovation use. We see an evidence of this
in the larger subgroup of consultants in the
Orlikowski’s case. For example, “some consultants
had doubts about the value of Notes for their own and
the firm’s performance. The skepticism felt by these
consultants was exacerbated by their limited
knowledge of Notes’ functionality. [Consultants felt
that] the training sessions were technical and
abstract… they found the training condescending and
unhelpful… [They] remained skeptical and
unmotivated.” It is therefore not surprising to find a
low degree of fidelity in their use of the technology.
The smaller group of consultants was also apparently
not willing to use the technology for knowledge
sharing, however their greater awareness of the
technology’s capabilities propelled them to reinvent
it in a different way.
While Lewis and Seibold’s list of factors capable
of inducing low fidelity appears quite sever, it seems
that milder forms of dissatisfaction may suffice to
induce technological reinvention. For example,
consider the case study written by Majchrzak et al.
[32]. The authors of that case describe the events
following an implementation of a communication
technology (CT) for the use of a virtual team;
“During the course of the project, the CT itself was
modified in significant ways. Some of this
modification was in the addition of new features,
some in the decision to not use certain features, and
some in the intent to which features were used…
Access privileges were initially set to allow both
management and team members access to the tool
and members were expected to use external
application viewers to share their documents. Team
members instead eventually limited access to only
team members, deciding to exclude management. In
addition, team members pushed the developer to
create a screen capture feature, which eliminated the
need for external application viewers… [Certain]
features [were] mostly unused.” Another important
change, “to couple virtually all use of the tool with a
synchronous ‘meet-me’ telephone conference,” was a
result of a realization that “While the members had
agreed
to
try
brainstorming
technology
asynchronously, over time, it became apparent that
members were able to brainstorm virtually, but not
asynchronously.”
Drawing conclusions from her case study,
Orlikowski [41] noted that “people are purposive,
knowledgeable, adaptive, and inventive agents who
engage with technology in a multiplicity of ways to
accomplish various and dynamic ends… When the
technology does not help them achieve those ends,
they abandon it, or work around it, or change it, or
think about changing their ends… Users will
continue to modify their technologies and continue to
change their uses of technology over time…
Technologies are often not used as designed or
intended.” When we add Lewis and Seibold’s
observation that attitudes toward the technology and
discomfort with its operation can lead to lack of
fidelity – that is, reinvention – we propose that
dissatisfaction with an IT can be a strong motivator
for its reinvention. Accordingly,
Proposition 1: Dissatisfaction with IT can result
in the reinvention of the technology.
In the following sections we discuss several
factors upon which the reinvention of dissatisfactory
organizational IT may be contingent.
4. Applicability
Not all organizational IT are equally likely to be
reinvented by their users, even when mild or strong
negative attitudes towards them prevail. For example,
you may not be able to reinvent Salesforce.com,
using it other than in the way in which it was
intended to be used. Similarly, Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) technology might exhibit a
very limited usability repertoire, thereby restricting
its usage to the goals prescribed by its designers.
However, when organizational technologies are
designed with an open architecture that is adaptable,
programmable, and reconfigurable, their users can
continuously customize existing features and create
new applications [40; 41]. Indeed, as observed by
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Swanson [53], certain technologies – i.e., those that
can be enhanced and extended – are more likely to be
adapted and modified than others. Many
organizational IT seem to fit this profile, making
them likely candidates for reinvention [19].
DeSanctis and Poole [16] observed that most
technologies are really sets of loosely-bundled
capabilities and can be implemented in many
different ways, with a variety of possible
combinations of features. They added that “The more
comprehensive the system, the greater the number
and variety of features offered to users.” Recently,
Fedorowicz and Gogan [19] concluded that the case’s
focal technology’s flexible foundation enabled its
subsequent reinvention by users.
Thus, it appears that the extent of reinvention is
likely to be greater with unrestrictive and
comprehensive technologies since these properties
allow for many possible applications. For example,
Orlikowski [39] observed that “Had a more rigid,
more fixed-function technology been used, the
pattern of use and change realized within the
customer service department would have been
different.” Similarly, DeSanctis and Poole [16] noted
that “The more restrictive the technology, the more
limited is the set of possible actions the user can
take.” On the other hand, as observed by Rice and
Rogers [46], technologies that are comprised of
loosely-coupled sets of components make it possible
for users to partially adopt them, keeping and using
some components while rejecting others. Thus, when
technologies have a high degree of flexibility (that is,
unrestrictiveness and comprehensiveness), they can
be readily changed to better meet emerging needs and
new situations, thus encouraging users to customize
them and allowing them to reinvent them by creating
new capabilities [47; 48]. In sum, the less restrictive
the technology is and the more comprehensive it is in
terms of the number and variety of features, the
greater the repertoire of actions its exposes to its
users.
DeSanctis and Poole argued that lengthy feature
lists are not ideal when studying appropriation of
technologies and suggested that those be replaced
with more parsimonious attributes. They proposed
that such attributes may be found by scrutinizing
what users are able to do with their technologies.
Dearing and Meyer’s [13] notion of applicability,
which is an indication of the degree to which an
innovation has more than one use or can be used in
more than one context appears to provide a more
holistic view of the extent to which a technology can
be reinvented. Accordingly, we adopt Dearing and
Meyer’s notion of applicability and adapt it slightly
for the purpose of this paper. As a result, we define
applicable technologies as technologies that can be
used in multiple ways and/or contexts.
When we assess IT with regard to their
applicability, we can infer that the extent of
technology reinvention as a result of IT
dissatisfaction may be greater when the technology
itself is highly applicable. Such an amplifying effect
is expected since in the absence of applicability,
which reflects architectural and operational
restrictiveness and limited functionality, dissatisfied
users would be constrained in terms of how they use
the technology and for which purposes they can
apply it [32; 39]. Accordingly, we advance the
following proposition:
Proposition 2: Users who are dissatisfied with
highly applicable IT are more likely to reinvent them
(or reinvent them to a greater extent) compared with
dissatisfied users of less applicable IT.
5. Unfaithfulness
Some
researchers
suggested
measuring
reinvention as the degree to which an individual’s use
of a new technology departs from the core or
mainline version of the technology as promoted by a
change agency [48]. Orlikowski [41] observed that,
“users in their recurrent interaction with technologies
may always choose to depart from designers’ a priori
intentions and the inscribed properties of the
technology.” Lewis and Seibold [30] defined lack of
fidelity (that is, reinvention) as the gap between the
technology’s intended use and design and its actual
use. Building on these scholars, we suggest that in
order to assess reinvention as a post-adoption
behavior we need to address the technology’s original
intent and purpose, perhaps as it was communicated
to potential adopters by those introducing the
technology.
The spirit of the technology, which is the general
intent regarding the technology’s values and goals as
prescribed by its designers and implementers and is
associated with a set of features [16; 17; 32; 35; 44],
appears to reflect what Rogers and Lewis and Seibold
consider the official or mainline version of the
innovation. The spirit of a technology can be inferred
from its design metaphor (e.g., knowledge sharing
system or customer relationship management
system); the labeling of its most salient features,
during training sessions in which proper and
improper uses are highlighted; through official
announcements, and; by communicating a new
performance criteria [15; 16]. For example, Dennis et
al. note that formal training may be used to “dissuade
unfaithful appropriation acts and encourage faithful
appropriation… Appropriation training educated
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members about the structures and how to use them.”
They also note that establishing restrictions is used to
constrain users and make it more difficult to adopt
structures in ways unfaithful. As such, spirit is seen
as capable of instructing users how to legitimately act
upon the technology in a certain context.
Several of the case studies used throughout the
paper note that the technology’s spirit was made
known to users. For example, “[the technology] was
deliberately designed to enable users to record,
chronologically, the work being done on each
incident, as it was being done [39].” And, “one of the
stated purposes of acquiring an ERP package: to
foster paperless office [8].” Finally, “[users] initially
accepted appropriations that deferred to the
technology’s spirit [32].”
While the features of the technology are intended
to advance the technology’s spirit but are
independent of it, indicating that the former may be
appropriated in a manner that is unfaithful to the
latter [16]. Even though unfaithful appropriation is
not officially labeled “bad,” it is nonetheless
expected that faithful appropriation would lead to
better outcomes [3; 9; 15; 16; 36; 55]. And while
Leonard-Barton [29] suggested that, at least in the
early stages, unfaithfulness is less of a concern than
misalignment between the task and the technology,
and Fuller and Dennis [20] found that when tasktechnology fit is low unfaithful appropriation can
bring about positive results, the prevailing view
considers unfaithful appropriation to be an
undesirable behavior. This view may be due to
change agencies’ general tendency to believe that
they know better than others, or perhaps because it is
difficult to measure the diffusion and impact of an
innovation which does not remain faithful to its
mainline version [46; 48].
While unfaithful appropriations are not common
in IS research, they appear to be common in IS
practice [10; 12; 16; 19; 30; 53]. Building on the
concepts of spirit and faithful appropriation we
conceptualize faithfulness as an indication of a user’s
intention to employ the technology in a manner
consistent with its mainline or core version of the
technology. Unfaithfulness is therefore a behavioral
intention that veers away from the spirit of the
technology. Treating faithfulness (or unfaithfulness)
as a behavioral intention helps us connect IT
dissatisfaction, which is an attitudinal construct [18],
with reinvention, which is a post-adoption behavior
[19; 21; 31].
We propose that IT dissatisfaction may be an
important factor in inducing lower levels of
faithfulness to the technology. Consider for example
the cases reported by Boudreau and Robey [8] and
Orlikowski [41]. In both case studies, users who did
not want the new technology chose not to participate
in formal training sessions, thereby remaining
unaware to the technology’s spirit [15]. Not being
fully aware of the intentions of the designers and
implementers made the spirit less coherent [16], in
turn making it easier for dissatisfied users to exhibit
unfaithfulness toward the spirit. In addition, lack of
training may have also reduced the level of comfort
the users felt, which is expected to reduce fidelity
[30].
Unfaithfulness may in fact develop even when the
spirit is coherent and when users are initially faithful
to it. For example, Majchrzak et al. [32] notes that
“[users] initially accepted appropriations that
deferred to the technology’s spirit.” However,
subsequently, users decided to not use certain
features and modify the intent to which other features
were used, when they were “confronted with
discrepant events that indicated that they could not
leave the technology’s spirit intact if their
performance goals were to be achieved.”
Accordingly, we suggest that when users are
dissatisfied with the technologies they use, they are
less likely to remain faithful to their spirit since the
latter is prone to be recognized as contributing to
their dissatisfaction. Accordingly, and considering
unfaithfulness’s role as behavioral intention, we
propose the following:
Proposition 3: Dissatisfaction with IT is likely to
reduce faithfulness to the spirit of the technology.
And,
Proposition 4: Users who are less faithful to the
spirit of the technology are more likely to reinvent it
than faithful users.
6. Mindfulness
So far, we have proposed that IT dissatisfaction
can cause users to feel less faithful to the spirit of the
technology, thereby increasing the chances that such
users would engage in technology reinvention. We
further argued that the extent of reinvention is likely
to be greater when the technology itself is applicable
and can be used for different purposes and in diverse
contexts. We now introduce our final variable,
mindfulness, which we expect to have an enhancing
effect on reinvention.
Mindfulness is defined as a state of mind where
the individual is experiencing awareness to novelty,
alertness to distinction, sensitivity to different
contexts, awareness of multiple perspectives, and
orientation in the present; the absence of these
qualities characterizes a mindless state of mind [25;
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26; 27]. Mindful individuals are able to change their
perspective to reflect the situation at hand [25; 26].
Alertness to distinction involves an ability to
compare, contrast, and make judgments about how
things are the same or different. Awareness of
multiple perspectives allows individuals to see things
from different points of view. Orientation in the
present prompts individuals to devote more of their
attention to their immediate situation. Individuals
who are sensitive to context are aware of the
characteristics of whatever particular situation they
faces [10]. People who are mindful can reason with
relatively novel kinds of stimuli, are comfortable
adopting unconventional ways of thinking, think
differently in dissimilar contexts, can think
dialectically, and pay attention to their present
surroundings [50]. Being mindful means ongoing
analysis of existing expectations, alertness to any
gaps between those expectations and actuality within
a context, and willingness and ability to adapt
expectations to reflect new experiences [58]. In sum,
transitioning to mindfulness is likely an precursor to
being able to notice when situations change (e.g.,
when gaps between expectations and actuality
emerge) and take appropriate action [10; 54].
In contrast, mindlessness is the absence of the
abovementioned properties. A mindless individual
will not pay attention to contextual and
organizational specifics, and will not spend efforts
identifying and exploring new IT innovations. Such
insensitivity and inattention to context and local
specific is likely to cause a mindless technology user
to overlook mismatches between the IT and the task,
and in turn to fail to take corrective action [54].
Routine and habit are seen as possible indications of
mindlessness, which may arise from premature
commitment to beliefs that may not accurately reflect
reality [10]. Mindlessness may cause individuals to
lose their ability to critically evaluate, explain, and
adapt their behavior, suggesting that IT
dissatisfaction may not occasion reinvention acts.
Returning to mindfulness, this state of mind is
associated with openness to adaptation and
improvisation, readiness for experimentation, and
willingness to understand and learn from mistakes
[10; 54]. This suggests that a mindful individual will
not overlook gaps and problems but instead pay
attention and then act if the current state (as opposed
to the expected state) of the technology is deemed
unsatisfactory. Such acts may involve creating
innovative solutions to problems and/or modification
of behaviors. Thus, a mindful individual is more
likely to apply a technology in new ways and in
different contexts [10; 25]. Accordingly, it appears
that a mindful technology user is (1) more likely to
be aware of his own IT dissatisfaction, which might
result from gaps between expectations and actuality,
and (2) take action to remedy the situation (e.g., by
trying to use it differently). Accordingly, we propose
the following:
Proposition 5: Mindful individuals are more likely
to act upon their dissatisfaction with IT by
reinventing their technologies.
Mindfulness may also encourage unfaithfulness to
the spirit. To see this note that mindful technology
users attend to innovations with reasoning grounded
in contextual and organizational facts and specifics,
and as such are expected to resist simplified, onesize-fits-all solutions that may be encoded in the
spirit [10; 54]. Furthermore, mindfulness is
associated with the ability to entertain complex and
possibly conflicting interpretations, apply diverging
perspectives, and think dialectically [26; 54; 58].
Such mindful individuals are less prone to blind
faithfulness to the spirit as it prescribed by its
designers and implementers. Accordingly,
Proposition 6: Mindful individuals are less
disposed to faithfulness to the spirit of an
unsatisfactory IT.
7. Summary
The prevailing view in IS research labels
individuals as either users or nonusers of technology,
treating them as passive recipients of an externally
developed artifact. According to this view,
individuals either wholeheartedly accept a
technological innovation, habitually using it without
change or they stop using it. Since IT satisfaction is
considered a key antecedent of a technology’s
continued use, then by extension, IT dissatisfaction is
considered a powerful indicator of technology
nonuse. This paper challenges this view—of an allor-nothing, use/nonuse dichotomy—and proposes
instead that a third technology behavior more
accurately characterizes the technology behavior
landscape – namely, technology reinvention. Thus,
the paper argues that dissatisfied users of technology,
rather than reject installed organizational IT, are
likely to reinvent it. This is particularly the case if the
IT in question is highly applicable. The paper also
proposes that the path from IT dissatisfaction to
technology reinvention might not be a direct one but,
rather, involve generating feelings of unfaithfulness
toward the technology’s spirit, as prescribed by its
designers and implementers. Finally, the paper
suggests that mindful individuals are more likely than
their mindless counterparts to acknowledge their IT
3116
dissatisfaction and act upon it by engaging in
reinvention acts.
This paper contributes to IS research, primarily to
the adoption and diffusion streams, by treating
dissatisfaction with IT as occasion for innovation. As
such, it opens new avenues for IS research by (1)
laying the foundations for additional theoretical
development including searching for boundary
conditions and identifying mediating and moderating
variables, including firm-level variables and (2)
inviting empirical examinations of the relationships
proposed in this paper.
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