Impact of psychological traits on user performance in information systems delivering customer service: IS management perspective

Abstract

Information systems-assisted customer service delivery has emerged as a strategic imperative that is increasingly tied to information systems resources, organizational capabilities, and work environment in organizational information systems management. Despite the potential of information systems, extensive diversity exists in the task performance within organizations which provokes the factors of psychological traits that affect performance. Drawing upon information systems success literature–contextual theories of organizational creativity, and behavioral and human psychology in an organizational environment–this paper develops a model to assess user performance in an organizational IS in providing customer services. Here, hypotheses have been developed in regard to the interaction of system satisfaction and organizational work environments with the user's psychological traits and how these interactions influence their performance. The model has been tested using survey data collected from a total of 314 respondents, regarding the users of a call center information system employed in a large organization. Results from the partial least squares analyses support the proposed model and highlight the important role of psychological traits in mediating the effect of systems, and organizational environment on performance. The findings also shed new light on the technological and organizational factors associated with the user performance. The implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed.