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Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives: An explorative study into the adaptivity of technology.

Stegehuis, F.J. (2021) Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives: An explorative study into the adaptivity of technology.

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Abstract:Recent studies depicted that the “workplace of the future” will become heavily dependent on Information Technology (IT) and the digital tools that it provides to organizational workers. However, multiple studies have shown that these digital tools have disruptive effects on its end-users. We reviewed and combined two streams of literature, namely Agency-theory and digital generations & IT, and noticed that both of these literary streams depicted technology as rigid and that change only occurred because of the end-user’s efforts. We therefore aimed to explore the possibilities for technology to adapt to its end-users, that we conceptualized as the adaptiveness of technology or Technological Adaptivity, which we claimed could reduce the disruptive effects of digital tools on the differing digital generations of end-users. We found that digital tools were not as rigid as both literary streams assumed them to be. Furthermore, the fact that digital tools were adapting independently of their end-users was unaccounted for in the literary streams on agency-theory. Therefore, we question if the depicted disruptive nature of IT is going to be problematic within the “Workplace of the Future” because digital tools are expected to become increasingly adapted towards it end-users. Furthermore, we also add to the scholarly debate on digital generations & IT by uncovering that Learning & Affluence diminishes differences across generations in terms of technology-usage and competency.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Unknown organization, Borne, Nederland
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/85834
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