Title: Do individual characteristics matter? The quality of work during the implementation of a workflow management system in a Dutch social insurance company

Authors: Benny M.E. De Waal; Paul Breman; Ronald Batenburg

Addresses: Research Centre for Innovation and Business, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, P.O. Box 85029, 3508 AA Utrecht, The Netherlands. ' Research Centre for Innovation and Business, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, P.O. Box 85029, 3508 AA Utrecht, The Netherlands. ' Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, NIVEL, P.O. Box 1568, 3500 BN Utrecht, The Netherlands; Institute of Information and Computing Science, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands

Abstract: Do individual characteristics influence how the quality of work is related to the use of a workflow management system (WFM) in a Dutch social insurance organisation? This key question is addressed in this paper. Building upon DeLone and McLean's model, we investigated the effects of gender, age, education, system experience and computer skills on the relationship between the level of user satisfaction with a WFM system and the perceived quality of work. The expected effects of individual characteristics were tested using survey data collected from 143 end users of a large Dutch social insurance organisation that recently deployed a WFM system. The results of the regression analysis show that: 1) user satisfaction has a positive relationship with quality of work; 2) age has a significant moderating influence on the perceived quality of work; 3) gender and system experience have no moderating effects; 4) education and system computer skills (as individual characteristics) had a degree of moderating effects. These results imply that it is valuable to focus on older employees when deploying information technology as WFM systems, i.e., by improving their computer skills in particular.

Keywords: quality of work; user satisfaction; individual characteristics; workflow management; systems implementation; social insurance; Netherlands; Holland; insurance companies; William DeLone; Ephraim McLean; gender; age; education; system experience; computer skills; end users; regression analysis; positive relationships; moderating influences; perceived quality; moderating effects; older employees; ICT; information technology; communications technology; business information systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2012.048339

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2012 Vol.11 No.1, pp.1 - 21

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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