Driving and Inhibiting Factors in the Adoption of Open Source Software in Organisations Neil Greenley; Jyoti Choudrie University of Hertfordshire Hertfordshire Business School Hatfield Hertfordshire. AL10 9EU. UK Contact Author E-mail: j.choudrie@herts.ac.uk Overview of the Presentation • • • • • • • • Background Aim of the research Literature review Research Approach Findings-Pilot Findings-Main study Conclusions Contributions 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 2 Background to Open Source Software (OSS) • OSS has played a key role in the IT industry • OSS originated in organizations in its current form in 1996 when the Open Source Institute (OSI) was formed. • In recent years, OSS has emerged in the form of: Online Social Networks such as, Facebook, or online free encyclopaedias or online access platforms such as, Wikis. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 3 Definition of OSS and PS • OSS has been broadly defined by IS as: “Software where the license model grants individuals, groups, and organisations extensive rights to use, modify, and redistribute the binary and source-code of the original and modified/derived works, without requiring license royalty fees” (Fitzgerald, 2004 cited in Macredie and Mijinyawa, 2011, p237) • When considering OSS, Proprietary Software has to be mentioned, which is defined as: “Software that is available only in its binary form (i.e., not in a form that can be easily modified), that generally requires the payment of license fees by enterprises/users, and that legally restricts user rights and vendor liabilities” (Macredie and Mijinyawa, 2011, p238). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 4 Examples of PS • Commercial off the shelf (CoTS) packages that many individuals use in their working lives • Web browsers such as: • MS Internet Explorer; • Office automation suite such as: • Microsoft Office; • Email servers such as: • Microsoft Exchange or • A database system such as • Oracle or IBM DB/2 (Sen, 2007, p234). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 5 OSS Growth (or not) • IS research has shown that global OSS related revenues are expected to be in the region of USD8.1Bn in 2013 and grow at an annual rate 22.4% (Gwebu and Wang, 2011). • Despite the free of charge aspect, OSS revenues are forecast to be less than 3% of global software industry annual revenue for the same period. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 6 Aim of this research Aim of this research To identify and establish the extent to which organisational adoption and usage of OSS can be shown to be a function of the driving and inhibiting salient beliefs of the managers involved for a specific sample. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 7 Research Approach • Philosophy: Largely Positivist • Sampling: Self-selection approach similar to other studies in IS adoption research was used (Alshare et al., 2009, Hilton et al., 2006). • Small population size: 32 for the pilot phase and 45 for the main study. • Developed a survey instrument • Contents of survey instrument: (a) a Likert-type scale indicating strength and direction of perception (i.e. driver or inhibitor for OSS adoption) and (b) open ended questions designed to collect additional qualitative data (i.e. in relation to OSS adoption) as in other IS research (Jinwei et al., 2006) • Questions: Drawn from previous IS research in the adoption and usage field; organisational profile (Barbosa and Musetti, 2010, Ngai et al., 2008) and individual profile (Zhou et al., 2011, Karahanna et al., 1999). • Questionnaire posting: Bristol On-line Survey (BOS) a web-based system designed for researchers who wish to collect data from respondents via the internet. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 8 Dominant Way of Considering Adoption & Use 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 9 Terms of Adoption, use and Diffusion • Adoption has been defined as, “Whether a person or an organisation is an adopter or a non-adopter of an innovation. This is usually measured as a binary variable based on self-assessment” (Jeyaraj et al., 2006, p5, Table 4). • Usage has been differentiated from adoption as post-adoption “subsequent continued use” (Karahanna et al., 1999, p184). • Diffusion has been defined as, “The extent to which a person or an organization exploits an innovation. This is usually measured as a percentage of available features used, possible sites adopted, or possible applications” (Jeyaraj et al., 2006, p5, Table 4). • When considering adoption, acceptance is another term which has emerged. Acceptance is specifically associated with end-user acceptance, which previous IS research has argued is important especially in organisational settings, as logically end-users must accept innovation before organisations can claim that a deployment has been successful (Gwebu and Wang, 2011, p221). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 10 OSS, adoption and use • Recently, IS research argued that there is a paucity of OSS research in the field of adoption and usage. • Results: 88/ 1,355 scholarly articles (i.e. 7%) were published in connection with OSS diffusion. • Of the 88, only 44 (i.e. 4%) of the scholarly articles related to OSS adoption (Aksulu and Wade, 2010, p583). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 11 OSS Research Published according to Tiered journals Publication Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total % of OSS Total 23/04/2015 5 "Tier One" Journals 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 2 5 5 15 7 7 9 0 55 14 "Tier Two" Journals 2 0 4 7 1 2 5 0 6 4 14 8 7 13 14 1 88 1,185 "Tier Three" Journals 7 32 28 62 102 136 185 273 342 417 475 434 443 518 436 50 3940 1.3% 2.2% 96.5% J. Choudrie & N. Greenley OSS Total 9 33 32 69 103 138 190 277 350 426 494 457 457 538 459 51 4083 12 Tier One journals • (1) Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), • (2) Information Systems Research (ISR), • (3) Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), • (4) Journal of the Association of Information Systems (JAIS) and • (5) European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) (Lyytinen et al., 2007, p318). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 13 Tier Two journals • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Information & Management, Communications of the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM), Journal of Computer Information Systems, International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Information Technology, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information Society, Information Systems Journal, Information Systems Management, Database for Advances in Information Systems and Journal of Global Information Management 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 14 Theories of Adoption, Use and Diffusion used more often in IS research Theory of Theory of Diffusion of Research Technology Reasoned Action Planned Behaviour (TRA) (TPB) Innovations (DoI) Self-efficacy (SE) Acceptance Model (TAM) All research 2,732 799 3,020 2,108 25,008 188 68 120 649 462 6.9 8.5 4.0 30.8 1.8 articles IS Research articles IS Research Contribution (%) Table 2.2: Comparison of and the Volume of Contribution of IS Research by Theory (Web-of-Knowledge, 2014) 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 15 Examining the Organizational, Adoption, Use, Diffusion Literature in the context of OSS Conceptual Area (Within OSS Research) Number of Articles Percentage Contribution (%) Adoption , Usage, Diffusion and Acceptance 420 10.3 Organisation/Organization, Enterprise and Firm 653 16.0 Top Adoption and Usage Theories 19 0.50 Others 3,153 77.2 Total OSS Research 4,083 100.0 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 16 Conceptual Framework of this research 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 17 Hypothesis 1 • IS adoption and usage research suggest demographic variables such as, age, gender and length of service are suitable individual profile data to collect. • Useful for establishing whether demographic factors are statistically significant independent variables in relation to adoption behaviour (Adams et al., 1992, Venkatesh et al., 2003). • IS researchers-demographic data focused on education levels (ranging from secondary school through to doctoral studies) are also important attributes to test for statistical significance in relation to adoption (Karahanna et al., 1999). H1: Individual profile factors will be of statistical significance in OSS adoption outcomes. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 18 Hypothesis 2 • Proposed that the motivation for OSS adoption can be linked to whether or not organisations actually employ software developers (i.e. have inhouse skills to adapt code) (Morad et al., 2005). • Organisational profile has been further defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) a hierarchical categorisation devised by the US Census Bureau (USCB, 2003). H2: Organisational profile factors will be of statistical significance in organisational OSS adoption. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 19 Hypothesis 3 • Our review found that the extant research will often investigate driving factors but not always inhibiting factors (Goode, 2005). • Therefore, this research will investigate both driving and inhibiting factors. • These factors, in conjunction with Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), have been used to deductively reason the creation of the hypothesis in the context of OSS adoption as below: H3: Attitudinal factors will be of statistical significance in OSS adoption outcomes. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 20 Hypothesis 4 • Social influence such as, subjective norm can be considered, “(1) informational influence, which occurs when individuals accept information as evidence of reality, and (2) normative influence, which occurs when individuals conform to the expectations of others” (Karahanna et al., 1999, p189). • Therefore, this research has sought to establish whether potential subjective norm factors associated with organisational OSS adoption and; (a) the behaviour of others (b) the influence of others and (c) the influence of others expectations. H4: Subjective norm factors will be of statistical significance in organisational OSS adoption behaviour. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 21 Hypothesis 5 • Perceived behavioural control can be considered, (1) facilitating conditions, described as, “the availability of resources needed to engage in a behaviour, such as time, money or other specialised resources”, and (2) self-efficacy, described as, “an individual's selfconfidence in his/her ability to perform a behaviour” (Taylor and Todd, 1995, p150) H5: Perceived Behavioural Control factors will be of statistical significance in organisational OSS adoption behaviour. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 22 Research Approach • Deductive approach in terms of establishing a set of hypotheses against which the quantitative data collected has been tested. • Used an online survey website-Bristol Online survey 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 23 Research Approach pursued in this study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 24 Demographics section 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 25 Likert scale type questions 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 26 Quantitative Data Analysis Process 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 27 Results of Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient Analysis for Pilot Study Construct Attitude (A) Behavioural Beliefs - Driving Adoption (BB-DA) Behavioural Beliefs - Inhibiting Adoption (BB-IA) Subjective Norm (SN) Behaviour of Others (SN-BO) Influence of Others (SN-IO) Influence of Others's Expectations (SN-IOE) Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) Organisational (PBC-O) Open Source Software (PBC-OSS) 23/04/2015 Questions Number of Items Cronbach's Alpha 22(a) to 22(q) 23(a) to 23(h) 17 8 0.97 0.90 25(a) to 25(c) 26(a) to 26(h) 27(a) to 27(l) 3 8 12 0.94 0.90 0.89 31(a) to 31(m) 32(a) to 32(f) Total 13 6 67 0.92 0.88 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 28 List of Attempts to Obtain Completed Surveys and Completion Rates Publicised via Direct Email invitation to 378 local government IT Managers obtained from the yougov.org website http://www.openforumeurope.org/ http://www.linuxquestions.org/ http://www.oss-survey.org/ http://forums.mysql.com/ 23/04/2015 Start Date End Date Completed Incomplete Completion Surveys Surveys Rate 28th Feb 2012 30th Mar 2012 21 38 36% 12th Feb 2012 12th Feb 2012 6th Feb 2012 14th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 Total 6 6 1 0 34 16 12 2 0 68 27% 33% 33% n/a 33% J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 29 Statistically Significant Driving/Inhibiting Factors and OSS Adoption for Pilot Study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 30 Radar Graph showing statistically Significant Driving/Inhibiting Factors and OSS Adoption for Pilot Study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 31 : Statistically Significant Driving/Inhibiting Factors and Intention to Adopt OSS for Pilot Study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 32 Summary of Conceptual Framework resulting from the Pilot Study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 33 Results of Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient Analysis for Main Study Construct Attitude (A) Behavioural Beliefs - Driving Adoption (BB-DA) Behavioural Beliefs - Inhibiting Adoption (BB-IA) Subjective Norm (SN) Behaviour of Others (SN-BO) Influence of Others (SN-IO) Influence of Others' Expectations (SN-IOE) Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) Organisational (PBC-O) Open Source Software (PBC-OSS) 23/04/2015 Questions Number of Items Cronbach's Alpha 20(a) to 20(p) 21(a) to 21(g) 16 7 0.940 0.792 23(a) to 23(c) 24(a) to 24(h) 25(a) to 25(l) 3 8 12 0.896 0.762 0.747 29(a) to 29(j) 30(a) to 32(i) Total 10 9 65 0.873 0.834 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 34 Main Study Compared to Pilot Study Samples Publicised or Invitations via Start Date Completed Surveys Incomplete Completion Surveys Rate 21 38 36% 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 29th Feb 2012 Total 6 6 1 0 34 16 12 2 0 68 27% 33% 33% n/a 33% 31st Dec 2012 45 42 51% End Date The Pilot Study Direct Email invitation to 378 local government IT Managers obtained from 28th Feb 2012 the yougov.org website http://www.openforumeurope.org/ 12th Feb 2012 http://www.linuxquestions.org/ 12th Feb 2012 http://www.oss-survey.org/ 6th Feb 2012 http://forums.mysql.com/ 14th Feb 2012 The Main Study Direct email invitation to 3,547 public 25th Oct 2012 sector IT managers 23/04/2015 30th 2012 Mar J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 35 Summary of Hypotheses by OSS Adoption (by year) and Confidence Level Observed 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 36 Summary of Conceptual Model Successfully Tested during the Main Study 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 37 Conclusion • Driving and inhibiting factors (or salient beliefs) associated with organisational OSS adoption can, and have, been identified for a specific sample of managers in an organisational context. • The model was shown to be the most accurate for the selected sample for organisational OSS adoption in 2012 yielding a 97.10% overall predictive capability, which represented a 37.54% improvement on “block zero” or straight forward probability calculation (i.e. without the use of the conceptual model). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 38 Example of Driving and Inhibiting Factors for OSS Adoption 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 39 Academic Contributions • From the comprehensive literature review there is a paucity of empirical IS research in OSS adoption in organisations. • Of the existing research it has been argued that many of these theories perhaps do not lend themselves to the complexities of the organisational context. • Specifically, having utilised TPB (Ajzen, 1991) constructs which are crucial to organisational scenarios, such as PBC, can be taken into careful consideration. Furthermore, this research has modestly advanced theory by incorporating theoretical constructs from organisational diagnostics (i.e. Force Field Analysis - FFA) and IS research (i.e. ITG multistage models). 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 40 Industry Contributions • From an industry perspective, and drawing on ‘design science’ principles (Hevner, 2004), this research has designed a methodology and artefact which can be easily reproduced in industry (i.e. the survey instrument, statistical/content analysis and graphical reporting) to best enable managers to pragmatically and heuristically develop intervention programmes to aid the adoption of OSS. 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 41 Questions? 23/04/2015 J. Choudrie & N. Greenley 42