Organizations today are facing difficulties with gaining committed employees. As organizational success isdependent on employee commitment, researchers have in recent years implied that there is a relationship betweenorganizational culture and organizational commitment. Organizational culture is described as the shared values,norms, assumptions and beliefs of a group. Moreover, research has shown that commitment consists out of threecomponents, of which continuance commitment is described as employees need rather than willingness to staywith its employing organization. Although there are research concerning the two concepts in a profit-drivenorganizational context, there seem to be less research concerning non-profit organizations, such as universities.The purpose of this thesis is therefore to examine if there is a relationship between organizational culture and thecomponent continuance commitment in universities. This was done through a quantitative research approach, witha positivistic research philosophy. To collect empirical data, a self-completion questionnaire was designed anddistributed. The choice was made to limit the empirical context to three universities within the Swedish countrySkåne. These universities are Malmö University, Kristianstad University and Lund University. Further, the contextwas limited to employees at the faculties of business administration and economics.The results of this thesis indicate that no relationship between organizational culture and continuance commitmentexists among employees at the faculties of business administration and economics at the three universities.Nevertheless, the results indicate that half of the respondents recognized a lack of organizational culture, butbelieved in need for it to create employee commitment.

Employees who want to leave their companies may exhibit low morale and commitment to organizations, which may affect the way employees interact with customers. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between employees' affective, continuance, and normative commitment to their organizations and their turnover intentions. The target population consisted of individuals with 2 or more years of call center experience who resided in the United States. Meyer, Allen, and Smith's 3-component model of commitment provided the study's theoretical framework. A purposive sampling of participants, which included a targeted audience and individuals who accessed the survey from Facebook and LinkedIn, returned 81 usable surveys. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis. The overall regression model showed a statistically significant relationship between the 3 forms of commitment and turnover intentions, although normative commitment had the strongest relationship with turnover intentions. Study results provide additional evidence showing that employees' affective, continuance, and normative commitment to their organizations relate to their turnover intentions. These results may contribute to positive social change by helping leaders to better understand the relationship between employees' organizational affective, continuance, and normative commitment and turnover intentions. With this knowledge, leaders may be able to decrease turnover and turnover-related costs and increase firm performance. The money saved from turnover costs can be used to develop employees, invest in the company culture, or contribute to community-related programs.

In educational institutions, the use of technology has been used to compliment face to face learning or used alone to deliver the educational needs and learning process for distance education. Where used alone, it is said to be online learning and where it has complimented traditional learning it can be said to be hybrid or blended learning. Before the pandemic, the question of choice or the voluntary use of these technology was there, and the student determined what was best suited for their educational and learning needs. This study looks at the how the students related with technology during the pandemic. It looks at constructs like performance expectancy, fit for use, effort expectancy, fit for task and ends with investigating the student’s perception on intention for future use. Using a mixed approach, the perception of students was sampled. First by using a quantitative method, hinged on the novelty of the disruption to reveal areas that could be of potential interest and then a qualitative method followed. The purpose of using a mixed method approach was for completeness and complimentary reasons. The results of the qualitative data and quantitative data were bridged to form meta-inferences, and these were used to answer the research questions and discuss the findings. The study revealed that technology was easy to use without little or no technical issues, it was fit for the task at hand, it aided the students to achieve their academic goals and needs, but intention to retain the use of technology for future academic activities was not welcomed. This was due to social factors like lack of motivation, feeling of isolation, lack of social interaction been missing but available in traditional classes. these are critical factors that affect the retention of technology for future use. In the presence of choice, they would rather go back to the traditional mode. They integration of technology with traditional mode of learning, i.e., blended mode of learning was highly welcomed.

Knowledge management (KM) encompasses the set of capabilities, processes, tools, and techniques for the most effective use of knowledge by an organization. The goal of KM is to improve the organization's ability to create, transfer, retain, and apply knowledge. Knowledge management is a goal that many organizations seek to achieve. Organizations apply their strategies, plans, and implementation to achieve KM. Organizations use technology to implement their KM strategy. For some, this approach has worked well; however, for others, the results have fallen short. KM shortcomings revolve around employees' infrequent use of the technology. This research seeks to understand what influences a user's behavior to use a KM system and why a user becomes a routine user. This research provides a model of KM continuance behavior and post-acceptance usage behavior. Post-acceptance usage behavior is how an individual decides to use a system after its initial acceptance. The KM continuance model incorporates technology, community, individual, and organizational elements that influence a user's intentions and actual use of a KM system. The specific context of this research is a KM system known as the Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN) system. AFKN emphasizes KM through expertise-sharing activities in Communities of Practice (CoPs). The AFKN KM system facilitates and enhances the relationships in the community. The data for this study were obtained by using an online questionnaire. The results are analyzed using Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling with a two-step data analysis approach. The first step assessed the properties of the measurement model. The second step assessed the path model. Path coefficients and t-values are generated to evaluate the 14 proposed hypotheses. The results of the investigation show that community and technology KM both positively influence a user's evaluation of the KM environment. The results produced a coefficient of determination of 60% for KM continued-use intention and 31% for KM continued-use behavior. The outcome of this research is a model that allows organizations to tailor their KM systems efforts to the organizational environment in order to maximize their resources. This investigation serves as a foundation for further research and development in areas of KM, KM systems, and post-acceptance usage.

The primary focus of this research is explicating the role of emotion in IT post-adoption behavior. Studied in the context of intelligent personal assistants (IPA), a class of conversational artificial intelligence (AI), the first study integrates elements from computer science, communications, and IS disciplines. The research identifies two constructs vital for speech-based technologies, natural language understanding, and feedback, and examines their role in use decisions. This work provides guidance to practice on how best to allocate R&D investments in conversational AI. The second essay examines the IT continuance through the theoretical lens of the expectation-confirmation model (ECM), incorportating cognitive and emotional satisfaction into the ECM framework. Empirical testing of the model suggests that it offers additional clarity on IT continuance phenomena and provides a significant improvement to the explanatory power of ECM in the context of an emerging technology. The third essay is one of the earliest efforts to conceptualize and test a theoretical model that considers emotional attachment in IT continuance behavior. This essay develops a novel model to investigate this phenomenon based on emotional attachment theory, and empirically validates the proposed model in the context of conversational artificial intelligence systems. While the existing theories of IT continuance focus on purely rational, goal-oriented factors, this study incorporates non-cognitive aspects by including the emotional consequences of IT continuance and offers evidence that attachment can exist even in the absence of cognitive factors.

Understanding information technology and its related products and services is increasingly important because the everyday use of technology continues to expand and broaden. Despite this need for greater understanding, the extant theories that explore the dominant factors that drive intention to use a new technology are limited. The Technology Acceptancy Model (TAM) is the most popular model in explaining traditional technology adoption. The limitations of the TAM in grasping the overall evaluation of technology or service are one of motivations for developing new models in this dissertation. The two antecedents of the TAM- perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use- only capture partial utility of a service (or product). In addition, some researchers argued that key factors used in an initial acceptance model such as perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are not strong predictors of future continuance intention of the service because they do not consider future switching intention in the later stage. Hence, one goal of this dissertation is to develop and test new models to predict factors that drive intention and continuance intention decisions of new technology related products or services. This research involves three studies that examine different aspects of adoption and continuance intention decisions of new technology-related products or services. Essay 1 posits and empirically tests a new model that examines service vendor quality, service outcome quality, and trust as drivers of cloud-based services by adopting the frameworks from marketing, behavior intention and information technology research. The model is referred to as the quality trust model (QTM). The quality of cloud-based services involves the quality of vendors and the quality of service outcomes; its effectiveness is mirrored by trust of the services. Data from an online survey of 355 respondents were used to test the research model. The results show that vendor quality and outcome quality influence trust, which is positively correlated with intention. However, vendor quality appears less salient than outcome quality in motivating usage of cloud-based services. We discussed the implications of the model and findings for practitioners searching for solutions in driving user participation, as well as for academics fascinated with a deeper understanding of roles of quality and trust in an individual level of decision-making behavior. Essay 2 posits and develops a model that includes the influences of reliability and flexibility on service quality, and influences of service quality on consumer perceived benefits and satisfaction, which consequently influences continuance intention of cloud services. The model explained 50% of satisfaction, which consequently explained 58% of continuance intention. We also examined the mediated effects among key drivers and validated the prominence of service quality in the IS continuance intention model. We delivered implications for academia and practice. Essay 3 unifies two theoretical frameworks a motivational model (MM) and expectation and confirmation theory (ECT) related to continuance intention and develops a new model that examines continuance intention of using smart devices. The article investigates the role of confirmation in the success of continuance intention of smart devices- the case of smartphones. We propose that confirmation is an antecedent of perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction. We also posit that confirmation directly influences continuance intention to use the devices. The paper will also propose that three specific advanced attributes - cost advantages, access to specialized resources, and quality improvement- will affect confirmation. An empirical examination of the model showed that confirmation predicts perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction, which mediates the effects of confirmation on continuance intention of smartphones. Hence, confirmation constitutes an important indirect factor influencing smartphones post adoption. Furthermore, cost advantages, access to specialized resources, and quality improvement all had significant influences on confirmation. The research contributes to the literature by confirming the important role of confirmation in smartphones adoption and by presenting that specific advanced attributes available to a user during a later phase can help enhance perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction. For managers of smart devices design, the study implies that building into the devices the ability to accommodate advanced attributes can elevate the possibility of persistent success.

Knowledge has long been recognized as one of the most valuable assets in an organization. Managing and organizing knowledge has become an important corporate strategy for organizations to gain and maintain competitive advantages in the information age. Electronic knowledge repositories (EKRs) have become increasingly popular knowledge sharing tools implemented by organizations to promote knowledge reuse. The goal of this study is to develop and test a research model that explains users' continued usage behavior of EKRs in public accounting firms. Theoretically grounded in the expectation-confirmation model (ECM) and commitment-based model, the research model presented in this study integrates both of these theoretical perspectives to study users' EKR continuance intentions. This study surveyed 230 EKR users from four large public accounting firms. Partial least squares regression was used to test the hypotheses and the explanatory power of the model. Results indicate that perceived usefulness and commitment exhibit a sustained positive influence on continuance intention. Additionally, subjective norms are positively related to calculative commitment and moral commitment. Organizational identification is positively related to affective commitment and moral commitment. Perceived usefulness is positively related to affective commitment and calculative commitment. The model comparisons with the technology acceptance model (TAM) and ECM demonstrated that the integrated model presented in this research explained 1.6% and 0.8% additional variance in continuance intention than both ECM and TAM respectively. Additional multi-group analyses were also conducted to examine the differences between knowledge seekers and contributors and the differences between knowledge novices and experts. This study raises theoretical implications in the area of knowledge management in general and EKRs in particular. It represents one of the first attempts to empirically examine users' continuance intention of knowledge management applications. This study has presented a different perspective on technology acceptance/continued usage by introducing commitment to explain continued IS usage. By integrating commitment and ECM, this study offers a useful framework for future studies on technology use. It demonstrates that both user commitment and perceived usefulness are strong predictors of EKR continuance intention. The results also raise interesting implications for practitioners interested in knowledge management and particularly for public accounting firms how to leverage EKRs to gain a competitive advantage. / Ph. D.

When developing client acceptance and retention policies and procedures, an audit firm's policy-makers are required to adhere to quality control and auditing standards established by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that are not well defined. As a result, the policies and procedures across firms may differ significantly. These differences arise from the development as well as the implementation of client acceptance and retention policies when evaluating prospective and continuing clients. My research study examines these differences in client acceptance and retention policies and procedures and also investigates the potential differences in policies and procedures across firms of different sizes (international, national, and regional). Using a qualitative setting, I interview risk management and local office partners across multiple firms to gather firm-specific and partner-specific information about client acceptance and retention policies and procedures. My results contribute to the existing literature on the processes and procedures developed by audit firms to assess and evaluate risks that may arise from prospective and/or continuing clients. / Doctor of Philosophy / Auditing standards provide requirements and recommendations for audit firms to follow when performing financial statement audits. These auditing standards also include both required and recommended procedures related to an audit firm’s decision to accept new clients and retain existing clients. Using a qualitative research methodology, I interview audit partners from five audit firms who are responsible for helping establish the firm-specific policies and procedures around client acceptance and client retention processes. I also interview partners from the same five audit firms who are responsible for performing those procedures when deciding whether to accept a prospective client or keep an existing client. I find that there are differences between the two partner groups as to the importance of certain client acceptance and client retention procedures. I also find that there are differences among the firms as well as the individual partners within each firm as to which procedures are key considerations in the client acceptance and retention processes.

The objectives of the study were: (1) to determine the relationship between organisational commitment (measured by the Organisational Commitment Scale), retention factors (measured the Retention Factor Scale) and job embeddedness (measured by the Job Embeddedness Questionnaire), and (2) to determine whether employees from different gender, age, race, marital status, tenure and job level groups differ significantly in their levels of organisational commitment, retention factors and perceived job embeddedness. A quantitative survey was conducted on a purposive sample (N = 206) of medical and IT service staff in the South African client service sector. Correlational and inferential statistical analyses revealed significant relationships between organisational commitment, retention factors and perceived job embeddedness. Significant differences between gender, age, race, marital status, tenure and job level groups were also found. The findings contribute valuable insight and knowledge to the field of Career Psychology that can be applied in the retention of employees in the medical and IT industry. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and practice. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / (M.Comm. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology))

<p>Organisations are by nature, dynamic entities that continuously undergo transformation in response to both internal and external pressures, which are imposed on them (Robbins, Odendaal &amp / Roodt, 2003). Government departments are by no means immune to these changes, which pose challenges that affect their service delivery. During periods of fundamental transformation, individuals typically experience changes in their levels of organisational commitment, which impacts on effective and efficient service delivery. Organisational commitment as an area of research is one of the factors that could lead to greater morale, strong organisational climate, motivation and productivity in many organisations facing transformation (Salami, 2008). The aim of this study was to investigate the level of organisational commitment after a transformation process at a Provincial Government Department. Recent organisational transformations (both in the private and public sector) have included the redrawing of divisional boundaries, flattening of hierarchic levels, spreading of spans of control, revising compensation, streamlining processes and reforming governance (Ndlovu &amp / Brijball Parusumar, 2005). The results of the research indicate that employees are moderately committed to the organisation. Statistically significant relationships were found between the dimensions of organisational commitment, except for affective commitment and total commitment which were not significant.&nbsp / Furthermore, results indicate that statistically significant differences exist based on the biographical characteristics (namely, gender, race, tenure, marital status, age and job level) but these characteristics do not significantly explain the variance in organisational commitment for this organisation. A limitation of the research is that the sampling composition and research design preclude the results of this study being generalised to other organisations and it is recommended that a stratified random sampling design be utilised for future research.</p>