User acceptance and corporate intranet quality: An evaluation with iQual

Information & Management 49 (2012) 164–170

User acceptance and corporate intranet quality: An evaluation with iQual

Stuart J. Barnes a,*, Richard Vidgen b

a University of East Anglia, United Kingdomb University of Hull, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 1 December 2009

Received in revised form 24 November 2011

Accepted 26 January 2012

Available online 24 February 2012

Keywords:

Intranet

Acceptance

Use

Web quality

PLS

A B S T R A C T

We developed a model for intranet quality and acceptance; it was applied to data collected by the sales

and marketing division of an international manufacturing company obtained via a Web survey (n = 131)

and tested using partial least squares path modeling. A strong explanation of behavioral intentions was

revealed. The results showed that intranet quality (composed of usability, design, and information

quality) was a significant factor in determining behavioral intention to use, although it was less

important than perceived usefulness and social influence. Comments collected from respondents were

analyzed via content analysis and further used to illustrate the findings.

� 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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1. Introduction and aims of our research

A corporate intranet today is a key medium for accessingorganizational memory and to retrieve company and productinformation. For example, Skok and Kalmanovitch [16] identifythree views of the role of the intranet: cognitivistic, connectio-nistic, and autopoietic. The cognitivistic view sees it as a culturallyand socially neutral repository of information. The connectionistic

view sees it as a tool that brings communities together to share andinterpret information, making some hidden organizational infor-mation locatable. The autopoietic view, noting that muchknowledge is tacit, believes that its role is to provide data toidentify relevant staff to contact in order to obtain the information.Thus although researchers may debate the role of the intranet andthe finer distinctions of data, information, and knowledge, theintranet undoubtedly has a role to play in knowledge sharing andthe quality of the intranet would be expected to contribute tointranet acceptance and ultimately to the effectiveness of thatknowledge sharing.

The aim of our research was to develop and test a parsimoniousmodel of intranet quality – iQual – that would allow firms to assessand diagnose the quality of their intranets. Given the ease withwhich online surveys can now be built and delivered, there is aconstant threat of survey fatigue and the length of a survey hasbecome a critical factor in its development (parsimony). We

* Corresponding author at: Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia,

Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom. Tel.: +44 1603 593337; fax: +44 1603 593343.

E-mail address: [email protected] (S.J. Barnes).

0378-7206/$ – see front matter � 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.im.2012.02.002

therefore accepted the constraint that the instrument should be asshort as possible. From a practical perspective we wished to gofurther than a statistical explanation of how constructs wererelated and to gain insight into how and why the intranet was used,issues with current implementations, and future needs (diagnosis).The survey was tested in a single organization: the sales andmarketing division of a multinational manufacturing company.The results were explored through a systematic analysis ofcomments collected as part of the survey.

2. Literature

There is a surfeit of research literature about evaluating thequality and user acceptance of Web sites on the Internet and e-commerce applications. For example, Yoo and Donthu [20]developed the SITEQUAL scale to measure the perceived qualityof an online shop, leading them to identify four dimensions (ease ofuse, esthetic design, processing speed and security); Barnes andVidgen [1] developed the eQual scale with five dimensions(usability, design, information, trust, and empathy); an updatedversion of the original IS Success model was used by Delone andMcLean [4] to assess the quality of e-commerce; and Parasuramanet al. [12] developed the e-SQ scale with seven dimensions ofservice quality (efficiency, system availability, fulfillment, privacy,responsiveness, compensation and contact).

Thus, a range of theoretical bases for Web quality evaluationhave been proposed, including TAM, service quality/marketing,and IS success. These approaches have often been supplementedwith items from ancillary areas, such as human computerinteraction and information quality. Typical dependent variables

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S.J. Barnes, R. Vidgen / Information & Management 49 (2012) 164–170 165

include: intention to use, intention to purchase or re-purchase,loyalty, and overall satisfaction.

There is a dearth of research on the evaluation of intraneteffectiveness. Intranets differ from the Internet insofar as contentis provided top-down by a small group of professionals; it isobjective and business-related and organized consistentlyaccording to a corporate taxonomy. However, this is a source ofweakness because the intranet may be difficult to search andnavigate, as they are seldom built from the consumer’s perspec-tive. Despite the widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies, theintranet exists in a formal organizational structure and manage-ment hierarchy that is absent in an e-commerce application andthus social influence should play a significant role in intranet use.Masrek et al. [10], who found that a variety of personal andorganizational characteristics were important in intranet utiliza-tion, including social norms and the influence of senior manage-ment. From a quality perspective, Leung [9] drew on the ISO modeland evaluated the intranet as a software artifact using dimensionsof functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability,and portability.

Some researchers have also attempted to examine theacceptance of corporate intranets using modified versions ofTAM, with their findings providing mixed support for it. Hortonet al. [7] apply TAM to two organizations in the UK from bankingand engineering sectors. Whilst the first study supported TAM, thesecond study found problems with support for the model and citesthe use of self-report measures as a key reason for this. Shih [15]combined TAM with the information behavior model in a study ofTaiwanese office workers and found that the relevance ofinformation needs strongly determined perceived usefulness,perceived ease of use, and user attitudes towards the Internetfor information seeking. Further, enterprise intranet users werefound to have more positive attitudes to the Internet and systemeffectiveness than were simple Web users. Recently, Lee and Kim[8] employed a heavily extended TAM model in their study ofintranet users in 10 major Korean companies. In their model, ISrelated factors (technical support and web experience) and taskcharacteristics (task equivocality and task interdependence) wereincluded, along with subjective norms. The model found manyweak relationships, with perceived ease of use being non-significant and subjective norms and perceived usefulness onlyfound to be significant at the 5% level in determining intranetusage.

However, few researchers have attempted to use acceptancemodels and Web quality together in a model that includes themboth. O’Boyle et al. [11] created an evaluation ‘toolset’ thatcombined features of a software artifact (homepage design, pagelayout, navigation, headings and labels, text appearance, graphicsand images, and content organization) with an extended TAM.However, this work was not operationalized as a model, but as asimplistic evaluation of quality before and after intranet redesign.

To our knowledge, ours was therefore the first study tointegrate a pre-validated quality assessment scale into a model ofuser acceptance.

3. Research model and hypotheses

Our research was driven by a wish to examine the impact ofintranet quality on intention to use and use of an intranet, ratherthan user acceptance per se.

3.1. Intranet quality

The eQual instrument [1,2] identified five dimensions of Webquality: usability, design, information, empathy, and trust. Of these,empathy consistently scored lower in importance in e-commerce

applications and was unlikely to play a major role in a corporatesetting where there would be some degree of uniformity of culture.Although trust would be a key factor in e-commerce, in a corporatesetting trust is expected to be higher through the corporate, closedsetting of the intranet. We thus focused on usability, design, andinformation quality in constructing a parsimonious instrument toassess intranet quality.

The usability dimension drew from literature in the field ofhuman computer interaction and IS quality while the designdimension draws on Web usability and service quality. Intranetquality is expressed using the dimensions of usability, design, andinformation quality. The scale has proven to be valid and reliable ina number of previous studies (see Barnes and Vidgen for furtherdetails on the provenance of the intranet quality items). Themodified quality scale is termed iQual. We expected, from our fromprevious research, that the quality construct would appear as asecond-order combination of these three first-order constructs andthus hypothesized:

H1: Intranet quality is positively related to behavioral intentionto use an intranet.

3.2. Intranet acceptance

Although quality was expected to impact behavioral intentionto use the intranet it was clear that other factors were also likelyaffect its impact. Recently, UTAUT [17] brought many factorstogether in a large and wide-ranging instrument. However, theexplanatory and predictive power of UTAUT has yet to be fullydemonstrated.

Part of our purpose was to produce an instrument for use in thecorporate world where lengthy surveys were likely to be ignored.We therefore decided that the instrument should be parsimoniousin its number of items. First, an intranet must be useful toemployees in doing their job. Perceived usefulness has been shownto be an important driver in intranet usage. Second, social influenceof senior managers, peers, and co-workers also plays a key role inintention to use. Subjective norms have been shown to influencethe usage of intranets [8]. Further, Masrek et al. demonstrated thekey role of top management support in their examination oforganizational and personal drivers of intranet use. Perceived easeof use was captured by the usability construct within our second-order intranet quality model and so it was not consideredseparately. Thus, we hypothesized:

H2: Social influence is positively related to behavioral intentionto use an intranet.H3: Perceived usefulness is positively related to behavioralintention to use an intranet.

Finally, behavioral intention was expected to have an influenceon usage, hence:

H4: Behavioral intention is positively related to intranet use.

The contribution of these hypotheses to our model is shown inFig. 1.

4. Methodology

To test our model we worked with the sales and marketingdivision of a multinational manufacturing company, which will bereferred to by the pseudonym: SalesOrg. It had recently employed aWeb design agency to build a new intranet site to support theirsales and marketing operations. The old intranet had become

Fig. 1. Research model.

S.J. Barnes, R. Vidgen / Information & Management 49 (2012) 164–170166

fragmented due to changes in its content and was no longerwidely used by the sales and marketing teams. Consequently, theorganization wished to create a single, enhanced repository ofsales and marketing data containing material about SalesOrg’svalues, processes, and methods, with tools and templates, casestudies, best practice examples, news items, resources (e.g.,product information), and e-learning units. Thus, the newintranet was to be a single point of access for all formalizedresources for all sales and marketing personnel to use to do theirjob effectively.

Our survey was conducted three months after the initialintranet implementation; it was implemented online and pilottested using a small group to check that the questions werecomprehensible and the survey was easy to complete. Responsesto the pilot survey showed that it was relevant and comprehen-sible and SalesOrg agreed to send the survey to a wider audiencein February 2008. The survey questions are shown inAppendix A; for all the items a five-point Likert scale was usedwith anchors ‘‘1 = strongly disagree’’ and ‘‘5 = strongly agree’’.Respondents were allowed to select ‘‘not applicable’’ to avoidforcing responses. Use was measured using a single, self-reported item, ‘‘In an average week, how much time would yousay you spend connected to the Intranet (for any kind of serviceand counting all the possible sessions over the week)?’’, withresponses as ‘‘1 = Don’t use it at all’’, ‘‘2 = Less than 15 min’’,‘‘3 = Between 15 min and 30 min’’, ‘‘4 = Between 30 min and1 h’’, ‘‘5 = Between 1 and 2 h’’, ‘‘6 = Between 2 and 4 h’’,‘‘7 = Between 4 and 10 h’’ and ‘‘8 = More than 10 h’’. The surveywas implemented online and publicized by email to the 200members of the SalesOrg division. A total of 131 usableresponses were received, representing a response rate of 66%.The number of missing values ranged from 2 to 3 (1.5–2.3%) forall items except the social influence scale which ranged from 9 to20 cases (6.9–15.3%).

Data analysis was performed using a variance maximizationapproach to SEM with associated statistics for validity andreliability using PLS with reflective indicators in Smart-PLS 2.0[14]. This technique has become increasingly popular in ISresearch, marketing, and management research due to itsflexibility; indeed, PLS does not require the same distributionalassumptions of normality for data and can handle small- tomedium-sized samples.

SEM caters for two types of analysis: construct and measure-ment. The construct model is used to assess the structure of theobserved and latent variables (e.g., Do the three survey itemscapture the latent variable ‘‘Perceived Usefulness’’?). The mea-surement model considers the relationships between the variablesand latent variables (e.g., Is the relationship between intranetquality and behavioral intention significant and if so how strong isit?). The PLS algorithm was run with mean replacement of missingvalues.

5. Results

5.1. Characteristics of survey respondents

Of the 131 usable responses to the survey, 63.4% were male(36.6% female), with approximately half being in the median agerange of 36–45 years of age (48.0%). The respondents wereexperienced employees in the sales and marketing arena with69.5% having more than 10 years experience (90.81% over 5 years).Similarly, the employees had been with the company for quitesome time, with more than half over 10 years and 81.72% over 5years. The respondents were only moderate users of the Internet,with a median of 4–10 h per week spent connected to the Internetin an average week. The use of the intranet in an average week wasgenerally quite low, with around three-quarters of the users usingit for less than an hour (74.8%) with a median of 15–30 min.

5.2. Tests for validity and reliability of the measures

To test the constructs we performed confirmatory factor andreliability analyses. Table 1 shows that the scale items exhibit highlevels of convergent validity and that all of the constructs fulfill therecommended levels for composite reliability (CR) and averagevariance extracted (AVE). The loadings of the measures on theirrespective constructs in the model range from 0.72 to 0.93, allsignificant at the 0.1% level. All items had more than the normallyrecommended 0.50 for AVE, ranging from 0.57 to 0.82. Similarly,the values for composite reliability are very good, ranging from0.87 to 0.94, well above the reliability values of 0.70 and 0.80 thatare typically advised for building strong measurement constructs.

We also showed that our analysis had discriminant validity bychecking that measurement items loaded higher on a constructthan the scale items for other constructs and that no cross-loadingoccurred. Item loadings in the relevant construct columns were allhigher than the loadings of items designed to measure otherconstructs; similarly, the item loadings are considerably higher fortheir corresponding constructs than for other constructs. The threefirst-order constructs for intranet quality, usability, design andinformation quality all loaded on a single second-order construct,as expected. Thus intranet quality is a holistic concept in its ownright.

Table 2 shows the discriminant validity: the square root ofaverage variance extracted for each construct was compared withthe correlations between it and other constructs and the squareroot is higher than the correlations.

As with any self-reported data there is a danger of commonmethod bias. Harman’s one-factor test [13] was used to assess it.Exploratory factor analysis produced four factors with the firstexplaining 47% of the variance and thus we proceeded on the basisthat there was no such bias.

Thus the testing for validity and reliability showed the data wasrobust and provided us with a high degree of confidence in thescale items used in the study.

5.3. Test of the research model

The results of PLS path modeling are shown in Fig. 2 (intranetquality is included as a second-order construct). A power analysisin G*Power 3.0 [6] showed that the sample size (n = 131) had goodpower for explaining medium population effects (f2 = 0.15;a = 0.05; and 1 � b = 0.95). The results also show strong supportfor the theoretical research model. Indeed, all paths in the modelwere supported. Specifically, the results showed that H1 wassupported at the p < 0.05 level and that H2, H3, and H4 weresupported and significant at the p < 0.001 level. The strongestdeterminant of the behavioral intention to use the SalesOrg

Table 1Psychometric table of measurements.

Construct Item Loading Mean St. error t-Value

Behavioral Intention

CR = 0.93 Behavioral Intention 1 (BI1) 0.89 4.05 0.026 34.3

AVE = 0.82 Behavioral Intention 2 (BI2) 0.90 4.20 0.022 40.2

Behavioral Intention 3 (BI3) 0.92 4.21 0.019 48.8

Intranet Quality (second order factor; CR = 0.94, AVE = 0.57)

Usability

CR = 0.92

AVE = 0.73

Usability 1 (USE1) 0.87 4.29 0.029 29.8

Usability 2 (USE2) 0.85 4.26 0.036 23.6

Usability 3 (USE3) 0.84 4.17 0.043 19.7

Usability 4 (USE4) 0.86 4.19 0.027 31.8

Design

CR = 0.87

AVE = 0.63

Design 1 (DES1) 0.78 4.15 0.065 12.0

Design 2 (DES2) 0.85 4.07 0.028 31.0

Design 3 (DES3) 0.75 4.19 0.065 11.6

Design 4 (DES4) 0.79 4.34 0.054 14.5

Information

CR = 0.89

AVE = 0.67

Information 1 (INFO1) 0.86 4.32 0.027 31.4




Perceived Usefulness

CR = 0.93

AVE = 0.80

Perceived Usefulness 1 (PU1) 0.85 3.91 0.039 22.0



Social Influence

CR = 0.88

AVE = 0.64

Social Influence 1 (SOCIAL1) 0.82 3.66 0.041 20.0




Note: CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted; n = 131.


intranet was perceived usefulness (b = 0.39) followed closely bysocial influence (b = 0.31) and lastly by a slightly weaker intranetquality (b = 0.19).

Overall, the model explained 58.0% of the variance in behavioralintention to use the intranet and thus compared favorably with theexplanatory power of previous acceptance studies. The explana-tion for use was more moderate (R2 = 0.15), but it represented asignificant finding. Employees of SalesOrg use the intranet basedon their behavioral intentions which are in turn were driven by theperceived value of using the system in terms of its usefulness, theencouragement of significant others in the workplace, and theperceptions of the overall quality of the intranet (measured usingthe iQual instrument).

5.4. Analysis of comments

The quantitative data shows that the intranet was well receivedby the users in the sample with the quality average score being4.17 (standard error = 0.051) where the maximum, 5, represented‘‘strongly agree’’. Table 1 shows that the evaluations for each of thequality scale items were well over the center point (neutral = 3),with the three constructs averaging 4.23, 4.20 and 4.10 forusability, design and information respectively. It seems that theintranet was particularly well received as a technical artifact.

As part of the survey we collected open-ended comments togain a deeper insight into user perceptions of the intranet. Of the

Table 2Correlations between constructs (diagonal elements are square roots of average

variance extracted).

USE BI PU SOCIAL iQUAL

USE n.a.BI 0.39 0.90PU 0.38 0.70 0.89SOCIAL 0.32 0.63 0.60 0.80iQUAL 0.17 0.58 0.64 0.45 0.76

131 usable responses, 53 provided additional comments (40%). Weconducted a simple coding of the responses using the constructs ofthe research model as initial coding and analyzed additionalthemes that did not fit neatly within the research model. Table 3shows these, with their number of occurrences. Some commentswere, of course, unusable and some commenters addressed morethan one theme, resulting in 55 usable coding instances.

The sense of the overall quality of the intranet, as represented inthe quantitative data, was reflected by general comments on thesite, e.g.,

‘‘Many thumps [sic] up for a remarkable revamp of the site’’and

‘‘Very helpful and great, please continue’’

The greatest number of comments (13) related to the perceivedusefulness of the site (in particular the contribution to knowledgesharing, including dissemination of best practice, target setting,and local knowledge). All were positive about the usefulness of theintranet, for example:

� ‘‘I consider the [SalesOrg] intranet site a very comprehensiveresource center for sales trainers.’’

Fig. 2. Results of PLS path analysis (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001).

Table 3Results of content analysis.

Construct Coding No. of comments Mapping to research model constructs

Motivation to use Knowledge resource 13 Perceived influence can be elaborated

into knowledge sharing and

community building

Community building 2

Organizational support Senior management support 1 Social influence

Marketing of site 3 Social influence can be elaborated to

include marketing communications

Time available to use site 2 Facilitating conditions might be

introduced to the model with the

dimensions of time available to use

(push) and the presence of

incentives (pull)

Incentives to use site 1

Quality General 3 Usability, information, and

design qualityUsability 1

Information quality 3

User experience 2

Navigation and structure 1

Content Planning for new content 1 Content maps to information quality;

multiple language support can be

viewed as part of ‘‘easy to understand

information’’

Additional content requirements 6

Currency of content 4

Support for multiple languages 5

Technical Availability via public Internet 1 System factors are not addressed in the

model. For an intranet used in many

countries system quality and public

internet availability may be relevant

factors in determining use

System performance 3

Links not working 2

Other Regulatory constraints 1 Regulatory factors need to be considered

by intranet designers (particularly in a

multi-country context) but would not

typically be evaluated as part of the

user experience.


� ‘‘The [SalesOrg] site has been useful resource to me in my day today job. It helps to widen my knowledge and new ideas toimplement in local countries.’’� ‘‘[SalesOrg] material is a unique contribution to our professional

development. The website has finally made the workshopmaterials available for reference and dissemination within thelocal teams.’’� ‘‘I really find the [SalesOrg] site a complete library of learning. It has

given me so much help in crafting my training plans for my team.’’� ‘‘We consistently use the information regarding sales effective-

ness since it provides clear focus and expecta[t]ions for ourperformance.’’

With regard to social influence and organizational supportthere was strong agreement amongst respondents that the sitecould be promoted more effectively:

� ‘‘. . .the site is not marketed very properly.’’� ‘‘Site has not been promoted to me discovered it by chance

because Pam mentioned it to me.’’� ‘‘I think senior management is not truly aware of [SalesOrg]

website. There are many programs in Sales and Marketing areasthat could be helpful, but in my own experience, outside mydepartment (Training and Development), nobody has commen-ted me something, about this site.’’� ‘‘I think in our area marketing the site need to be taken more

seriously and sessions for clarification for users should beconducted plus that senior managers should indorse thisinitiative and ask their teams to use.’’

The comments were particularly helpful in getting a betterunderstanding of the content requirements: there were six

comments relating to the need for new content, four commentsconcerning out-of-date content, and five commenters asked formulti-lingual support (particularly Spanish).

Although some reservations were expressed about the qualityof the site with respect to performance – ‘‘It’s slow to downloadfiles’’ and ‘‘site hangs once in a while from our end’’ – theoverwhelming view of the site was positive.

Finally, some of the respondents were relatively new users andthe quality survey itself proved to be a useful way of promoting theSalesOrg intranet site:

� ‘‘We find the site very useful and attractive, however we mustadmit that we did not use it much due to lack of time. Ourintention is to increase the time of navigation in order to takeadvantage of all of the contents of the site.’’

The comments in Table 3 were mapped to the research model inFig. 1 to provide triangulation of findings.

The original eQual instrument contained an item addressingcommunity building as part of assessing service interactionquality; it was found to be of little importance to users, whowere more concerned with usability and information quality.

Social influence might be extended to cover the effectiveness ofmarketing communications.

Facilitating conditions may be relevant for intranets, particu-larly user time (intranet push) and incentives to use the intranet(pull).

Although we assumed system and technology aspects wouldnot be a factor in intranet usage, when the intranet is used inseveral countries with varying degrees of infrastructure and access,system quality will probably play a role.


6. Discussion and conclusions

We successfully tested a parsimonious model of intranetacceptance in the sales and marketing department of a largemultinational manufacturing company. The model was robustlysupported by the data and shows that behavioral intention wasstrongly driven by perceived usefulness, social influence, andintranet quality (consisting of usability, design quality, andinformation quality).

The results showed that iQual is a reliable measure of intranetquality. As expected, perceived usefulness was the strongestindicator of intention to use the intranet, followed by socialinfluence. Quality is significant but does not have as large animpact on intention to use as do social influence and perceivedusefulness. Previous studies have shown mixed results for socialinfluence and many studies have found it to be a strong predictor,while other studies have found it to be insignificant [5]: it is likelyto be a stronger factor in intranet applications than in general e-commerce applications due to the existence of formal manage-ment and organizational structures as well as powerful (but oftenhidden) social networks. Each organization will have a differentbalance and mix of formal and informal networks and this mixneeds to be considered in any in-depth analysis of social influencethrough techniques such as social network analysis [3,18]. Masreket al. examined subjective norm, along with other variables, toexplain different usages of intranets in four corporations inMalaysia. Subjective norm showed strong path coefficients inexplaining utilization mode, decision support, and knowledgesharing. The study by Lee and Kim found that subjective normswere the largest predictor of intranet use. However, in their studyof ten large Korean companies this was found to be negative andwas explained by a high level of voluntary use. In our study, theintranet is the only source for much of the important sales andmarketing information.

The relationship of behavioral intention and usage, althoughhighly significant, was only moderate. This is probably due tousage data being collected at the same time as intention data. Thisissue is further found by Horton et al. [7] in their study of intranetsin the UK using the TAM model. Usage is a lagged effect and needsto be assessed at a substantially later time than intention. Ideally,actual usage should be measured by objective data such as webserver logs rather than being self-assessed: however, this is noteasy to achieve if the survey is to be administered anonymously.

The analysis of respondent comments provided insight intohow the intranet is useful as a shared knowledge resource and aqualitative understanding of why perceived usefulness is stronglyassociated with intention to use. The comments further highlight-ed the need for management to market the site. Specificrequirements, such as multi-lingual support were easy to distillfrom the comments, as were technical issues such as broken linksand slow download times.

There were numerous implications for practice. First, theimpact of social influence suggested that the site must bepromoted and supported by senior management to build usage.This deployment of the formal organizational structure might becomplemented by a study of the informal social networks [3] thatsupport knowledge sharing in organizations, possibly leading tothe nurturing of communities of practice [19]. One might expectthat intranets and embedded groupware promote inter-functionalco-ordination and information sharing within firms but apparentlythis is not always true. Understanding social networks is importantin laying the foundation for such activities.

The analysis of qualitative comments provides a practical wayfor firms to understand why and how employees use the intranetand to identify development requirements (e.g., multi-lingualcapabilities).

Although the findings of the research were significant, it isworth considering some of the limitations of our study. Firstly,although the sample had good explanatory power for medium-sized effects, a larger sample might help to reveal smallerpopulation effects. Secondly, the model was tested in a singleorganization. Thirdly, the research was limited in terms of themeasure of usage. The research adopted a single self-reported andunlagged measure of usage as a proxy for actual use, which is notuncommon in similar studies.

Our study sheds light on the topic of intranet quality and useracceptance and we hope that it paves the way for others to begininvestigating aspects of user behavior and knowledge sharing inWeb-enabled corporate IS.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous company whosponsored this research.

Appendix A. Survey instrument

A.1. Intranet quality

Usability

Learning to operate the site is easy for me.

My interaction with the site is clear and understandable.

I find the site easy to navigate.

In general, I find the site easy to use.

Design quality

The site has an attractive appearance.

The design of the site is appropriate for this type of site.

The site conveys a sense of competency.

The site creates a positive experience for me.

Information quality

The site provides accurate information.

The site provides timely information.

The site provides complete information.

The site provides easy to understand information.

A.2. Acceptance

Social influence

People who influence my behavior think that I should use the site.

People who are important to me think I should use the site.

The senior management have been helpful in the use of the site.

In general, the organization has supported the use of the site.

Perceived usefulness

Using the site enables me to accomplish tasks more quickly.

Using the site increases my productivity.

Overall, I find the site useful in my job.

Intention to use

I intend to use the Site on a regular basis.

I predict I will continue to use the site on a regular basis.

I plan to use the site on a regular basis.

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Stuart J. Barnes is Chair and Professor of Management

in the Norwich Business School at the University of East

Anglia. He received his PhD from Manchester Business

School. His primary research interests center on the

successful utilization of new information and commu-

nications technologies by businesses, governments and

consumers. He has published five books (one a best-

seller for Butterworth–Heinemann) and more than a

hundred and fifty articles including those in journals

such as the International Journal of Electronic Com-

merce, Communications of the AIS, Data Base, Psychol-

ogy & Marketing, the European Journal of Marketing,

and Information & Management.

Richard Vidgen is Professor of Systems Thinking in the

Hull University Business School. Following fifteen years

working in the IT industry he studied for a PhD in

Information Systems. He has published research

articles in leading information systems journals such

as Information Systems Research, Information &

Management, European Journal of Information Sys-

tems, Journal of Information Technology, and the

Information Systems Journal. His current research

interests include (1) Internet quality and Web site

usability and (2) the application of complex adaptive

systems theory, ideas, and models to the study of

management and organizations.

http://www.smartpls.de/

Documents

User acceptance and corporate intranet quality: An evaluation with iQual