Assessing Workers' Attitude towards Technological Change: Scale Construction

Author(s): Anjula Gurtoo and Arabinda Tripathy

Source: Indian Journal of Industrial Relations , Apr., 2000, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Apr., 2000),
pp. 519-531
Published by: Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27767683

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IJIR, Vol. 35, No. 4, April 2000 COMMUNICATION

ASSESSING WORKERS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE: SCALE
CONSTRUCTION

Anjula Gurtoo and Arabinda Tripathy

INTRODUCTION: IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

The process and consequences of introducing new technology

vary from one organisation to another. A technology system is
more than the sum of its techniques. Besides its technical capabilities,
its success is also determined by how well it is adopted in the
organisation. Studying the history of industrialisation, several
authors have pointed out that after a time lag major technological
changes have always induced significant changes in the
organisational processes. Change in technology has observable
and immediate side effects on organisational processes like work
tasks (Thompson, 1985), job design (Wall, 1990), organisational
structure (Joan Woodward, 1965; Rastogi, 1995), knowledge and
skills required (Adler, 1986), and values, attitudes and behaviour
of employees (Huczynski & Buchannan, 1991; Mcloughlin & Clark,
1988). Substantive change in one or more of the above factors
leads to perceived or actual psychological threat of job displacement,
reduction in economic security, disruption of social arrangements,
and redefining of authority relationships (Dawson, 1994; Aldag et
al, 1994). These threaten the psychological and social status of an
employee, triggering off resistance to change.

The experience of bringing in new technology has been mixed in

emerging economies like India. Technologies like computer controlled

Dr. Anjula Gurtoo is Visiting Faculty and Dr. Arabinda Tripathy is Professor, School
of Management, Indian institute of Technology, Mumbai.

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520 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

machines (CNC) and Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT)

have added to the cost of administration in certain organisations rather
than streamlining the system or improving productivity (Dutta, 1990).
The success of new technology depends on the extent to which the
workforce is ready to accept and adapt to the technological as well as
to the organisational changes ( Dayal and Aggarwal, 1995). Western
researchers have found that in general workers or end-users support
technological change, but their reaction to subsequent organisational
changes is mixed. Any perceived threat to their employment, job
status or skills and expertise is met with resistance (Woodward, 1958;
Daniel and Millard, 1993; Evenson and Westphal, 1994). Thurmond
and Kunak (1987) proposed a model of transition that highlights 'people'
as a critical organisational factor. Their model identifies attitude,
knowledge and skills of employees, as an important attribute for
successful implementation of change. Pasmore and his calleagues'
(1982) collated data of 134 studies on technology change reveals that
productivity increased in only 60 percent of the cases, signifying the
importance of non-technical feature of "end-user" in the improvement
of organisational productivity. Several researches have proposed that
it may not be change per se which influences attitude and motivation.
Rather it will be the interplay of organisational variables and their
perception by the individual that would lead to development of a
certain attitude (Abita, 1985; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1980).

Because employee attitude is a key variable that must be

considered in order to explain and predict the degree of success of
technological change in an organization, there is a need for an
effective instrument that can assess the attitude of employees
towards technological change. This paper describes the
development and content of such an instrument.

NEED FOR THE INSTRUMENT

The need for this new instrument was felt due to two limitations
in the existing literature : 1) focus, in the content of many instruments,
on organisational variables (like organisational structure, work tasks
and skills) rather than end-user variables (like opinions, fears and
apprehensions), and 2) lack of instruments that measure psychological
reaction of attitude. Existing literature emphasizes the link between

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Communications 521

technology change and organisational systems, using the

psychological outcome or response of the employeee as implied
rather than directly tested. Most of the studies on technological
change have not considered the role of the individual worker as a
moderator between technological change inputs and their outcomes.
The main focus has been, on the inputs of technological change
(independent variables) and outcomes of change (dependent
variable). There is a need to identify worker related psychological
variables that could affect the outcomes of change.

The feeling of an individual gets formed during the time he is

experienceing the change process. It is during this 'trying out or
experiencing' stage that evaluation takes place and opinions and
attitudes get formed. If the experience is negative, it decreases
the likelihood of actual adoption of technological systems and
attitude can get revised downwards. Further, this attitude can get
projected onto others, influencing their reaction. Hence it is
important to study attitudes of individuals who have gone through
the change process. Study of attitude also becomes important, as
it is a predictor of behaviour. Ajzen & Fishbein (1969) developed
a model called 'Theory of Reasoned Action'. They interpret Dulany's
theory of propositional control as applied to social behaviour. The
theory assumes that actions are best predicted by intentions and
that intentions are in turn 'determined by a person's attitude towards
that object and his perception of the social situation'. Therefore,
there are two major factors influencing behaviour: a personal or
attitudinal influence and a social or environmental influence. Thus,
in order to understand workers' reactions to technological changes,
besides the organisational context, it is equally imperative to study
their attitude towards technological changes.

In view of the two reasons, the development of a scale to measure

attitude towards technological change was undertaken.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCALE

TheMievelopment of the scale occurred in two phases. In the

first phase, the pre-testing phase, six variables were hypothesized
and items were developed and tested on a sample of 63 employees.

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 522 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

On the basis of the statistical results of the first phase, a second

phase involving 149 industrial workers was undertaken which acted
as confirmatory analysis for the scale. The two phases are described
below:

Phase V. Pre-testing the Scale

Items for the Scale

There is a wealth of project management literature which quotes

critical success factor in implementation of new projects of
technology, R&D and organisational development (Pinto and Slevin,
1986; Locke, 1984). There are also studies specific to technologtical
changes (Brown & Karagozoglu, 1989; Venkata Ratnam, 1992; Dayal
and Aggarwal, 1995) which have tried to understand factors critical
to successful implementation of technological changes. All possible
variables that the above mentioned literature quotes as either getting
affected by technological change or in turn affecting technological
change process were considered for the initial scale. The variables
were captured in 42 items.

Since the purpose of the scale was to treat response to

technological change as an attitude, we followed Edward's (1957)
procedural guidelines for constructing Likert-type attitudinal scale.
Items were designed to evoke affect or opinion rather than cognition
or recall. In addition, items were developed such that they had
the ability to evoke clear agreement or disagreement from the
respondent. Another design consideration was that each item should
not evoke unreasonable socially desirable responses in the subject
and that the final instrument be short and simply scored. A Likert
type attitude scale format was adopted with five possible response
choices: (1) totally disagree (2) slightly disagree, (3) neither agree
nor disagree, (4) slightly agree, (5) totally agree.

The instrument was administered to 63 employees who had at

least two years of experience in manufacturing units. The responses
were factor analysed using principal component factor analysis, to
establish whether there was a common set of dimensions measured
by the instrument that were shared by the respondents. Factor analysis

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Communications 523

gave twelve factors with latent roots of at least 1.00, explaining 76

percent of the total variance. Tabachnick and Fidell (1996) suggest
ways of analysing factor analysis results for scale construction. As
suggested by them, the items were checked for low loading on all
factors or multiple high loadings. Items with low loading on all
factors were removed. Some of the items related to inter-personal
interaction could get explained in more than one factor. Therefore,
the items with multiple high loading were checked to see if their
presence in more than one factor could be explained. Those items
whose presence in multiple factors could be justified were retained
and the others were removed. Each of the selected items was checked
for congruity with other high loading items in its main factor. To
keep rigour and stringency in the scale construction another
verification for the factor analysis results was conducted. Means
and standard deviations of all the items were calculated. Items with
extreme mean score (too high or too low) coupled with low standard
deviation have poor capacity to differentiate between respondents.
The factor analysis results were seen along with the mean and standard
deviation results. Twenty-nine items were selected in the process.

Factor analysis was done again on the selected items to check

item loading and interpretability of factors. A seven-factor solution
emerged, explaining 66.7 percent of the variance. Each of the 7
factors was identified for a common theme running in its high
loading items. The factors were interpreted as /work satisfaction',
'personal comfort', job content', freedom on the job', change as a
challenge', 'control on the job', and 'output'. The factor analysis
solution revealed that many items directly related to job content
either did not come as significant or were split into multiple factors.
For example, items like'freedom of information' and 'freedom in
decision making' grouped together to form a separate factor of
'freedom on th? job'. Further, some job content related items got
factored into separate factor of 'control on the job' and some personal
comfort items got factored into separate factor of 'change as a
challenge'.

Thus, results of the pre-test show that the respondents may

not be viewing the attitude towards technological change as was
hypothesized, i.e. into factors of personal comfort, job content,

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 524 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

intengible concerns of work, output, interpersonal interaction and

some general items to test overall outlook towards technological
change. The factor of job content and personal freedom got split
into smaller independent factors. This indicates the importance
of job satisfaction, freedom and control on the job, and perception
of change as a challenge in defining attitude towards technological
change.

Cronbach's Alpha Reliability Test

Reliability analysis for the whole scale and for each factor of
the scale was done to check if there was consistency in the
respondents' interpretation of the items. Cronbach's alpha tests
the accuracy with which an individual's score measures his response.
The alpha value for the whole scale was 0.832. The reliability of
all factors was above the acceptable level of 0.4. Results of factor
analysis and reliability test are detailed in Table 1.

Phase 2: Confirmatory Analysis

A subsequent investigation of the pre-tested version of the

attitude scale was conducted on a sample of industrial workers of
the Indian automobile industry. Indian automobile industry is
witnessing rapid technological advancements as a result of entry
of multinational firms and increased competition. Responses were
obtained from 149 workers who had experienced technological
change in their organisations. The factor structure derived in this
phase was then compared to the structure derived in the pretest
and interpretation of the factors was done with reference to the
structure in the pretest.

The attitude scale item responses from this sample of workers

were factor analysed with a forced solution of seven factors. This
was done to check if the items were being grouped into similar
factors as in the pretest. Using principal component factor analysis
method a seven factor solution emerged explaining 62.2 percent
of the total score variance. The results revealed that the factoring
of the scale items was largely similar to the pretest results. To
make the scale more rigorous the items were subjected to further

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Communications 525

analysis. Items that were outliers in terms of either high loading

on more than one factor, or factors which were outliers in terms
of only few items being factored on it, or factors which had low
reliability score, had to be analysed carefully This meant either
finding right explanation for the outlier item or factor, or removing
that item or factor. Five items were found to have either low loading
or high loading on more than one factor. Each of the five items
was analysed to see whether it was possible for that item to explain
presence in more than one factor. Items of an attitude scale are
not completely independent of each other. It is possible that one
item can explain two or more factors. For example, 'relationships
with coworkers' can either be a job content feature, just a supporting
relationship in work or can explain the overall work climate. If an
item is part of two factors, it means it is reducing the independence
between factors, which can reduce the robustness of the scale. But,
on the other hand, removing an item important for explaining the
concept reduces the validity of the scale. Therefore, to have a robust
scale, subjective analysis of the items becomes as important as
statistical analysis. Item analysis reduced the number of scale items
to twenty-five.

Cronbach's Alpha Reliability Test

The reliability of the scale, after removing the four high loading
items, was 0.77. The reliability score is within the acceptable range.
The removal of the four items significantly increased the
explainability of the factors. The reliability scores for the factors
ranged from 0.81 to 0.27. The results for factor analysis and reliability
are illustrated in Appendix 1.

Theory quotes reliability score of 0.40 and less as low. Therefore,

any grouping of items or variables with reliability of 0.40 or less will
be statistically an outlier. Low reliability could be either because the
grouping is not real or the items grouped together are less in number.
In such cases individual judgement becomes important to identify a
real or false relationship. In this instrument, the factor 'work satisfaction'
had alpha value of 0.27, which is statistically on the lower side. This
factor should be theoretically an outlier. The low value could be because
of the presence of only two items in the factor but this makes the

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526 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

factor vulnerable to instability and also questions whether this factor

is real. On analysing the items it was found that the factor loading of
the individual items were high. Further, literature draws a significant
relationship between job satisfaction and desire to work hard on the
job (Bass, 1985). As this factor explains a relationship which literature
quotes as significant and as the loading of the two items on this factor
were significantly high, it was retained as part of the final scale.

ATTITUDE TOWARDS TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE: THE

FINAL SCALE

The scale has 25 items measuring employee attitude towards

technological change on a Likert-type scale. The final list of items
is given in Appendix 1. the 'attitude towards technological change'
scale is explained by seven dimensions, namely, personal comfort,
job content, technological change as a challenge, output, control on
the job, freedom on the job, and work satisfaction. It is notable that
factor analysis has separated job related variable into three distinct
factors, namely, job content related concerns, control on the job, and
freedom on the job. Further, it brings out 'technological change as
a challenge' as a separate factor from 'personasl comfort'. These
results are indicative of the relative importance of control and freedom
on the job. Results also emphasise that 'technological change as a
challenge' is a significant dimension that forms attitude towards
technological change.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

An instrument in the form of Likert-type attitudinal scale

was developed for the purpose of assessing employees' attitude
towards technological change. The main goal in developing
the scale was that it should represent industrial workers'
concerns. Versions of the instrument were administered to
about 218 respondents. The scale factored seven dimensions
that suggest that an employee's concern for technological change
may be on two main fronts: at the personal level and at the
job content level. The confirmatory analysis revealed high
internal consistency. Thus it would appear that exploring the
construct validity of the scale is a necessary next step. The

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Communications 527

scale should be further analysed for its sufficiency to

descriminate between variables. Further, detailed analysis can
be conducted to recheck if the scale is comprehensive in its
coverage of relevant test variables and also correlate with
behavioural indicators. In addition, as the validity of this
instrument was gathered from predominantly industrial
workers, there is a need for additional research to establish
greater generalizability of the instrument to different
populations (e.g. staff and middle managers).

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528 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

APPENDIX 1

The Scale Items, Factor Loadings and Alpha Values Arranged by Factors

Scale Items Percent Alpha Loadings

variance value

I. PERSONAL COMFORT 17.8 0.81

1. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will arouse my interest. 0.73
2. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace leads to improved conditions of work.
0.71
3. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will give me an opportunity to
add to my skills through training. 0.70
4. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will help me speed up my
personal achievements. 0.66
5. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will change the nature of my job
for the worse. -0.58
6. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will be a source of challenge to me. 0.59
7. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will lead to increase in others'
expectations from me. -0.64
8. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will improve the quality of my
relationship with management. 0.47
II CHANGE AS A CHALLENGE 11.3 0.68
9. I believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will increase my feeling
of responsibility. 0.79
10.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will increase my commitment
towards work. 0.70
II. 1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will represent progress. 0.61
III. UNCERTAINTY REGARDING WORK 8.7 0.59
12.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace bring in complicated situations
in the workplace. -0.77

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Communications 529

13.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace means more job security for me. 0.74

14.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace will decrease my scope of work. -0.61
IV. OUTPUT 7.0 0.61

15.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace will save time and effort 0.70

16.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace lead to increase in productivity. 0.70

17.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace will bring opportunity
to earn more money. 0.67
V. CONTROL ON THE JOB 5.8 0.57
18.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will lead to loss of direct
control over my work. -0.71

19.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace are a wasteful exercise. -0.70
20.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will not increase my workload. 0.48
21.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will give me a feeling of
loss of status. -0.43

VI. FREEDOM ON THE JOB 5 0.46

22.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace lead to easy flow of information. 0.77

23.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace means increased freedom in
my decision making. 0.57
VII. WORK SATISFACTION 4.5 0.27
24.1 believe that changes in technology at the
workplace will decrease employee willingness
to work hard. -0.79

25.1 believe that changes in technology at the

workplace will increase my expectation of
satisfaction from work. 0.46

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 530 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

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Table 1: Results of the Pretest: Factor Analysis and Reliability Test

Factor % variance Number of Factor loading Alpha value

explained items factored range for each
factor

Work satisfaction 19.70 6 0.85-0.50 0.79

Personal comfort 14.20 6 0.81-0.55 0.76
Job content 8.80 5 0.78-0.56 0.69
Freedom on the job 7.50 4 0.74-0.46 0.62
Change as a challenge 6.20 3 0.69-0.59 0.45
Control on the job 5.50 2 0.71-0.47 0.72
Output 4.90 3 0.79-0.59 0.70

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