Being ready for digital transformation: How to enhance employees’ intentional digital readiness

Abstract

Organizations rely on employees' intentional digital readiness to enable digital transformation, as such readiness determines individuals’ actual use and acceptance of digitalization.Therefore, the purpose of this study was to obtain deeper insights into the key drivers of employees' international digital readiness. To do so, we developed the Employee Digitalization Acceptance Model, which is grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Personal Resource Adaption Model (PRAM). Particularly, we investigate the indirect effects of personal resources (proactive personality [PP] and growth mindset) and job resources (empowering leadership [EL] and trust in management [TM]) on employees’ intentional digital readiness through their perceptions of digital working tools (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use).Based on data from 1143 employees, structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypothesized relationships. While perceptions of digital working tools, PP, EL in terms of autonomy support, and TM were found to enhance intentional digital readiness based on our results, a growth mindset and EL in terms of development support reduced this readiness.This was the first study to develop a theoretical framework to examine employees’ intentional digital readiness by considering the key variables of TAM and integrating personal and job resources derived from PRAM.