Çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarını kullanma niyetini etkileyen faktörlerin teknoloji kabul modeli ile incelenmesi ve yapısal eşitlik modeli analizi = Examination of the factors affecting the intention to use online meeting tools with technology acceptance model and structural equation model analysis

Abstract

COVID-19 salgını küresel bir sağlık krizine yol açarken aynı zamanda önemli teknolojik, sosyal ve kültürel değişimleri de tetiklemiştir. İş süreçlerini ofislere bağımlı olarak sürdüren çalışanların bir kısmı artık uzaktan çalışmaya alışmışken, diğerleri ofis ve uzaktan çalışmanın bir karışımını barındıran hibrit çalışma modellerini hayata geçirmeye başlamıştır. İçinde bulunduğumuz dönem, uzaktan çalışmanın doğası hakkında fikir edinmek, çeşitli iş süreçlerini uzaktan yürütmek ve pandemi sürecinde öğrenilen tecrübeleri, ofis içi ve hibrit çalışma ortamlarını iyileştirmek üzere kullanmak için eşsiz bir fırsat sunmaktadır. Artık birçok çalışanın ofis ortamı yerine uzaktan çalışmayı tercih ettiği ve iş arkadaşlarıyla iletişim kurmak, görüntülü toplantılar ve konferans görüşmeleri yapmak ve birlikte çalışmak için çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarını kullandığı bilinmektedir. Ancak iş birliği, bilgi paylaşımı, sosyalleşme, performans değerlendirme ve veri güvenliği gibi konulara yönelik bazı endişeler halen devam etmektedir. Bu çalışma, günümüz çalışma ortamlarında çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarının çalışanlar tarafından kabulünü etkileyen faktörlere odaklanmaktadır. Temel araştırma sorusu: "Türkiye'deki çalışanların çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarının kullanımına ilişkin beklenti ve endişeleri, bu araçları kullanma niyetlerini nasıl etkilemektedir?" olarak belirlenmiştir. Araştırmanın nihai sonucuna ulaşmak için öncelikle, çalışanların çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarının kullanımına ilişkin beklenti ve endişelerinin tespit edilmesi; daha sonra, bu faktörlerin bu araçların kullanılma niyetini ne ölçüde etkilediğinin belirlenmesi gerekmektedir. Bu doğrultuda çalışmada, keşfedici ardışık tasarıma dayalı bir karma araştırma yöntemi benimsenmiştir. Nitel aşama sonucunda elde edilen bulgular üzerinden genişletilmiş bir teknoloji kabul modeli önerisinde bulunulmuş; nicel veri seti kullanılarak yapısal eşitlik modellemesi ile modeldeki ilişkiler test edilip yorumlanmıştır. Çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarının kullanımına ilişkin beklentilerin (çalışan-çalışan etkileşimi, teknolojik katkı ve sosyal ve örgütsel değişimlere uyum), algılanan fayda ve algılanan kullanım kolaylığı aracılığıyla, çalışanların bu araçları kullanma niyeti üzerinde yüksek düzeyde, pozitif yönlü ve istatistiksel olarak anlamlı bir etkiye sahip olduğu görülmüştür. Bu araştırmanın, günümüz iş dünyasında yaygın olarak kullanılan çevrimiçi toplantı araçlarının kabulüne ilişkin teori, metot ve uygulama alanı kapsamında literatüre katkı sağlayacağı düşünülmektedir.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global health crisis, it has also triggered significant technological, social and cultural changes. While some of the employees who have been dependent on offices for their work processes are now used to working remotely, others have started to implement hybrid working models that include a mix of office and remote working. The current period offers a unique opportunity to gain insight into the nature of remote working, to carry out various business processes remotely, and to use the experiences learnt during the pandemic to improve in-office and hybrid working environments. The remote working model offers significant benefits to companies and employees. With this working model, organizations can reduce or eliminate real estate costs, reduce immigration issues, and recruit and deploy talent globally. Employees have geographical flexibility, can live where they prefer, commuting is eliminated and work/life balance is improved. However, concerns remain about how telework affects collaboration and communication, including brainstorming and problem solving, information sharing, socializing, performance appraisal, compensation systems and data security. In recent years, many companies have allowed more employees to work from home. As of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been experienced worldwide, has dragged organizations that had never even thought of working remotely before to this working model, allowing managers and employees to experience remote working. Companies like GitLab took this trend one step further before the pandemic even started, eliminating offices completely and adapting everyone from the lowest level employees to the CEO to work remotely. When employees choose to work remotely instead of in an office environment, they use a variety of online meeting tools such as Adobe Connect, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom to communicate with colleagues, collaborate together, conduct video meetings and conference calls, and collaborate in real time. It is now known that many employees prefer to work remotely rather than in an office environment and use online meeting tools to communicate with colleagues, hold video meetings and conference calls, and work together. However, some concerns about issues such as collaboration, information sharing, socialising, performance evaluation and data security still remain. Studies on the acceptance and use of new technology often focus on the factors that promote the acceptance of a system by individuals. In this context, models of acceptance and use of ICTs would be a good guide to identify the factors that influence the acceptance of online meeting tools. This study focuses on the factors affecting the acceptance and intention to use online meeting tools, which are used in today's remote, hybrid and face-to-face working environments and whose use has increased significantly with the pandemic, by employees in private companies. Despite the abundance of studies on the acceptance of various technologies in the literature, there are only a few studies on the use and acceptance of these tools, which are widely used by private businesses. This study, which examines the factors affecting the acceptance of online meeting platforms by employees in private enterprises within the framework of TAM, is planned to fill an important gap in the literature. The main research question: "How do the expectations and concerns of employees in Turkey regarding the use of online meeting tools affect their intention to use these tools?" The sub-questions to be answered in order to answer the research question are as follows: 1) What are the expectations of individuals working in private enterprises regarding the use of online meeting tools in their collaborative work? 2) What are the concerns of individuals working in private businesses about the use of online meeting tools in their collaborative work? 3) How do expectations and concerns about the use of online meeting tools affect attitudes towards these tools? 4) How do expectations and concerns about the use of online meeting tools affect intentions to use these tools? Within the scope of the main research question and the four sub-questions, the ultimate aim of the study is to present a valid and reliable model of the acceptance of online meeting tools in remote work environments. In this context, the objectives of the study are; i) To identify the factors that affect the intention of individuals working in private businesses to use online meeting tools through concerns and expectations, ii) To propose a model of acceptance of the use of online meeting tools in businesses by linking the identified factors with the factors tested in technology acceptance models in the literature, iii) To develop a measurement tool to test the proposed acceptance model, iv) To test and evaluate the suitability of the proposed acceptance model with the data collected with the help of the developed measurement tool. In order to reach the final result of the research, firstly, it is necessary to determine the expectations and concerns of employees regarding the use of online meeting tools; then, it is necessary to determine the extent to which these factors affect the intention to use these tools. Accordingly, a mixed research method based on exploratory sequential design was adopted in the study. An extended technology acceptance model was proposed based on the findings obtained from the qualitative phase, and the relationships in the model were tested and interpreted with structural equation modelling using quantitative data set. In order to examine the use of online meeting tools in the business world, it is necessary to determine an approach to the subject. The research focus of this study is to identify the factors that influence the use of these tools and to assess the extent to which these factors influence the acceptance and use of online meeting tools. A review of the literature in this area reveals that the list of variables focuses only on the technical aspects of these tools, while organizational and social factors are ignored. Moreover, it was observed that the studies in the literature primarily targeted the educational community and students. As a result of the detailed literature search, no research was found on the acceptance of online meeting tools, which play an important role in today's work environments, by businesses and their willingness to integrate them into their business processes. Microsoft's 2022 report on the future of work provides a comprehensive overview of recent developments surrounding hybrid work and addresses work at the intersection of the individual, team, enterprise and society. This dissertation is formulated to encompass the aspects affecting online meeting tools that are at the heart of remote working. Therefore, care was taken to address all four dimensions during the interviews in the qualitative phase of the study and the development of the survey questions in the quantitative phase. Studies that use the technology acceptance model for online meeting tools directly incorporate the main antecedents of the technology acceptance model commonly used in the literature and provide the survey questions they use from existing scales of these dimensions. Despite its widespread adoption by businesses before and after the pandemic, there are no studies that specifically examine the incorporation of online meeting tools into business processes. Moreover, existing studies do not include the perspectives of key decision makers in businesses and the developers of such tools, and do not consider employee, team, organization and community aspects together. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of online meeting tools or individuals' personal preferences, this dissertation focuses on how these tools are used in routine work processes in organizations and their impact on teleworking. Considering that managers decide which information technologies are used in companies, for what purpose and how, in order to gain in-depth knowledge about the research topic, interviews were conducted with the developers of Zoom and Microsoft Teams as well as decision makers from different sectors and departments who are familiar with online meeting tools and use them in their business processes. The interviews were then qualitatively analyzed to identify the factors that influence the acceptance and use of online meeting tools in organizations through expectations and concerns. In order to determine whether these factors are endorsed by employees in different sectors, an extended acceptance model was constructed by integrating the expectation and concern dimensions as external variables to the existing TAM. A scale was developed with the support of experts to test the theoretical model and evaluate different dimensions of the model. The statements of the scale, which was analyzed for reliability and validity through a pilot study, were administered to employees in various sectors through an online survey. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the quantitative data obtained from the employees and to test the structural validity of the model. The factors affecting the acceptance of online meeting tools in organizations are considered together with the factors considered in similar studies and their effects on the intention to use are compared. Finally, recommendations are made for software developers and decision makers. Expectations regarding the use of online meeting tools (employee-employee interaction, technological contribution, and adaptation to social and organisational changes) were found to have a strong, positive and statistically significant effect on employees' intention to use these tools through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The qualitative and quantitative phases of this study aim to reduce the gap in the literature on the factors affecting the use of online meeting tools in private companies, as well as to contribute to future research on these tools and to studies in the field of technology acceptance model. It is thought that this study will contribute to the literature within the scope of theory, method and application in today's business life where remote working is accepted and hybrid working is widespread.