Tolerance to Change, Personality and Age Differences in Acceptance of Technological Innovation Among Civil Servants.

ABSTRACT This survey studied Tolerance to change personality and age differences in the acceptance of technology innovation among civil servants. Four hundred and thirty (430) non academic civil servants were selected through convenient sampling to participate in the study. The population size is made up of five (5) higher institutions drawn out of purposive sampling from all the higher institutions in Enugu state. They include University of Nigeria, Enugu campus, Enugu state college of education, Enugu state university of science and technology, Godfrey Okoye 8 University, and Institute of management and technology, Enugu. The questionnaire used were Technology acceptance Model (TAM), developed by Davies (1989), Resistance to change scale (Oreg, 2000) and Technology Readiness Index (Panasuraman, 2000). Tolerance to change was studied using the Resistance to change scale (Oreg, 2000), Personality was studied using the Readiness Index (Panasuraman, 2000), while the technology acceptance was studied using the Technology acceptance Model (TAM), Davies (1989). Age differences were studied from the demographics data. The survey employed a cross sectional design. Multiple regression was used to analyse it. Results of the data analysis showed that Tolerance to change is a negative predictor to acceptance of technology innovation. Also, age is a negative significant predictor in the acceptance of technology innovation. This study asserts that Personality is a positive significant predictor of acceptance of technology innovation and recommends establishing practices to motivate various age brackets in the civil service in accepting and adopting information technology alongside the changes it brings.